Crono Returns
by PrinceVeggie
Summary: A dark-toned sequel to Chrono Trigger. Glenn kidnaps Crono and Marle's child, and it's up to them to figure out what's going on, and to rescue their son. Chrono Cross is disregarded as being canon in this story. Rating bumped up to M due to content appearing after the first few chapters.
1. Assault on Guardia Caslte

**Author's note: Hello guys, this is a story I've been working on for a while. There's actually quite a story behind it and why I only just now uploaded chapter 1, but that aside, I may as well explain the canonicity of this. This story will completely ignore Chrono Cross, not because I don't like CC, but because...**

**1. the creator said that CC is more of a "what-if" scenario or something along those lines, so CC isn't exactly canon in the first place; it's an alternate timeline if anything.**

**And**

**2. This story will feature Chrono Trigger characters, themes, elements, etc., and I don't want the story to end with all of the characters we know and love from the SNES game getting killed. Talk about a downer ending.**

**And one last note: italics are used to indicate flashbacks and dreams, and the "ooo" thing is used to separate scenes.**

**With that, let's begin!**

**ooo**

_"Mom, could you tell me about my dad?" Crono asked his mother while he was sitting at the table, eating his his roly poly stew._

_His mother paused a moment. He was only five years old, and his whole life he'd only known his mother, but Crono had started school recently, and seeing so many fellow students with fathers, he must have caught on that he might have one too. She could have just left him in the dark, but what kind of mother would that make her? She decided to finally just tell her son the truth, there was no point in hiding it back any longer._

_"Crono, your father... he left us before you were even born," she said, a few tears falling down her face as she looked down._

_Crono was confused by this. "Why is mommy crying?" he thought._

_"Mommy, you're crying."_

_His mom suddenly realized that it was obvious she was crying. She wiped the tears from her face. "It's nothing, sweetie. Just enjoy school today."_

**ooo**

Crono was dreaming about the conversation he had with his mom those fifteen years ago. After all these years, he still wondered what his father was like. He never bothered to ask his mom again, after all he knew that bringing up the topic again would just upset her. He just lied in bed for a moment, before realizing something wasn't right.

"Crono..."

"Crono!"

"Get up Crono!"

It was his wife, Marle. She was desperately urging him to get up.

"Crono, the castle is being set on fire and I can't find Ashley!" she practically screamed to him.

With that, Crono frantically hopped off the bed. Not only was Guardia Castle being set on fire as evident by the strong smell, but his infant son Ashley was nowhere in sight.

"What's going on here, Marle!?"

"Ashley isn't in his crib! He's nowhere in this room! We need to find him before the castle burns to the ground!"

"Alright, I'll search the west section of the castle, just search around the east section," Crono told her, his voice showing visible signs of fear.

They both took off running downstairs to explore the caslte, but it that wasn't necessary. As soon as they made it all the way down to the throne room, there was a familiar figure in sight standing over King Guardia. Well, King Guardia's corpse that is. His body was surrounded by a large pool of blood, and the person standing over it was short with green spiky hair, wearing clothing that seemed to be from the 600's. The person wasn't in the form Crono and Marle recognized him by, but the identity was obvious. This person was...

"Glenn, what the hell is going on here!?" Crono called to his old friend and teammate.

Glenn simply laughed evily at Crono. "We just needed to grab your son, hope you don't mind the mess we caused."

Behind Glenn were about a dozen red skeletons, each with a fiery aura around them, and one of them was holding Ashley. No doubt those monsters were responsible for the fire. "Give us our son back, you bastard!" Marle screamed as tears began to fill her eyes, having just lost her father. She wasn't about to lose her son as well.

A few fire skeletons stepped in, but Glenn held the Masamune in their direction. "This fight shall be between my old friends and me. I want half of you to stand back, and the other half to jump into the portal."

The portal...

"The time portals were all linked to Lavos, and when Lavos died, the portals all disappeared, right?"

This was something that barely crossed either of their minds, after all it was the least of their worries. One of the red skeletons who hopped through the portal was actually carrying Ashely, and this enraged both Crono and Marle.

Crono unsheathed his sword and charged at Glenn, but years of being a frog helped Glenn to be extra agile, allowing him to leap back as Crono tried to slash him. Marle didn't have her crossbow handy, but she launched a few sharp icicles at Glenn using her magical powers. Glenn dodged all of them by flipping backwards in air, and simply fired a wave of water at both of his former allies, knocking them to the wall.

Crono and Marle looked at each other and signaled it was time to use their dual technique: the ice sword. Crono held it in place, and Marle used her magic to encase it with ice. Crono then ran at Glenn and knocked him down with the sword so hard, it shattered the ice. Glenn, however, just leapt back up a few meters backwards from Crono.

"I remember that technique being a little stronger," Glenn taunted as he jumped up to the ceiling and came down with his sword down, launching himself at Crono.

Crono just barely dodged and proceeded to try countering Glenn with a powerful lightning attack, but all he could manage was a mere lightning 1 spell. Glenn raised his shield over his head, and Crono's lightning magic was blocked.

"Come on, is his really the best you two can do? You couldn't even muster a luminaire or ice 2 spell? It's just as I expected, years of sitting around rather than fighting and training have turned you two weak," Glenn remarked.

It was true. Crono and Marle were more concerned with their son and their country the past few years than their fighting skills, if only because they figured they'd never have to fight any major enemy again, but as the currently occurring battle proved, they were dead wrong.

He then leapt towards Crono and their two swords clashed. As they held each other's swords against their opponent's, Marle used ice 1 on Glenn, but he easily jumped back and blocked the ice with his shield.

"Your pathetic ice cubes have nothing on this," Glenn shouted, and proceeded to hit both of them with water 2. They were once again knocked against the wall by this wave, even more violently than before, with Crono's sword flying out of his reach. They both took in quite a bit of water through their mouths and noses, causing them to start coughing on the floor. Their situation was getting worse, as the castle was burning severly. It was only a matter of time before the whole thing burned to the ground, and they were inhaling enough smoke as it is. Glenn started for the portal as Crono extended his arm at him and dashed for him, but Glenn grabbed Crono's arm as Crono attempted to grab his.

"Give Ashley back," Crono demanded, looking Glenn in the eye.

"No," was Glenn's only answer as he threw Crono down on the floor headfirst, and proceeded to kick him while he was down.

"Why are you doing this Glenn!? I thought we were friends," Marle called out to him.

"Friends? With you wimps? Don't make me laugh! Enjoy dealing with these fire skeletons, as if you have no chance against them," Glenn stated as he stepped forward to the portal, with it closing a moment after he went through.

The red skeletons drew closer to the fallen lovers. They were both injured, and their magic wasn't exactly useful against these things. Fire skeletons weren't very weak to lightning, and if Marle used her ice magic, they'd just burn through the ice as it came towards them, making the spell useless. "I don't suppose you have any energy left for healing, do you?"

Marle shook her head left and right. "Sorry, I don't have any more energy after those ice spells."

As the skeletons were coming closer, King Guardia rose up and went after his daughter and son-in-law. Glenn must have done something to the corpse, because now the king was also a skeleton.

Marle and Crono just cried as the skeletons came closer. It was obvious their time was through.

"I love you Marle," Crono told his wife, believing those were going to be his last words.

"Crono, I love you too..."

They both lied down and closed their eyes to avoid seeing the skeletons, realizing what was coming. They were about to be going down in flames with the castle.

_SWISH!_

They heard something being sliced from behind. They were still in one piece, which means that they couldn't have just been hit by a sword, even if the skeletons did have swords. could it be someone was helping them in their moment of hopelessness?

They could barely make out two figures from behind the skeletons. One of them was sliced in half by an armored man, which means one of them was almost certainly one of their knights. Another was shot with a powerful plasma bullet to the head, causing its head to explode. The four surviving skeletons diverted their attention from Crono and Marle to the two people defending them. One of the skeletons launched a fireball at a purple-haired woman wearing an orange suit with black shorts. She just absorbed it, presumably because she had a fire-retardant vest underneath her clothes. The knight vertically sliced one of the skeletons in half with his sword, and the last two were finished off with a plasma sword dual technique where the knight stabbed through both of the skeletons, causing their bones to shatter.

"Come on, follow us," the woman called to the two of them, extending her hand to help one of them up.

**ooo**

With the help of Lucca and Fritz (Who had become a knight a while ago in hopes of being a hero like Crono, the man who saved not only his life from the corrupt chancellor three years prior, but also the future of the planet), Crono and Marle just barely managed to escape the castle. There it was, burnt into ashes. Many of the people inside the caslte managed to make it outside to the forest, but there were also a few people (such as the majority of the knights inside who gave their lives attempting to defend the castle from intruders) who had perished. The situation was hard on everybody, but Crono and Marle especially. After all, they both witnessed their father's death, their castle burning down, and their son getting kidnapped by their old friend- all within a few minutes. They decided to explain everything that happened to Lucca and Fritz.

"I'm really sorry you guys had to go through that. I'm just glad we managed to save the two of you," Lucca stated.

"It's not your fault, you have no need to apologize. We both thank you, but we have to take action soon if we wish to save Ashley," Marle replied.

**ooo**

How was that portal opened if Lavos was defeated? Why did Glenn turn traitor? What is Ashley needed for? Stay tuned for future chapters to find out!

_To be continued..._

**ooo**

So, how'd you enjoy the first chapter? Was it a decent start, or was it god awful? I'd appreciate R&R's, thank you.


	2. Silverd

_As Crono was running around in a field of grass, he ran into a large, tan man. The man turned around as Crono approached him. The man was clad in golden battle armor, and stood at roughly 150% Crono's height, in addition to having large muscles. Crono stopped in his tracks as the man looked him in the eye._

_"Who goes here?" the man questioned._

_Crono took a step back. "Why are you asking?"_

_The man chuckled a bit. "I see you've grown up."_

_"W-what do you mean by that?"_

_"Nothing really. But if you'll excuse me, I need to do something I forgot to do 20 years ago," he replied in an emotionless tone._

_"What are you talking ab-" Crono began before being sucker punched in the gut. It didn't help the man had a metal gauntlet on._

_"W-why are y-you doing this?" Crono asked, his pain showing through his voice._

_The large stranger said nothing. He simply raised his foot above Crono's head and proceeded to bring it down as forcefully as he could._

**ooo**

Crono bolted up on his bed, breathing heavily. He looked to the left, and could see Marle standing right next to him. She could tell he just had a nightmare.

"Crono, are you alright? What happened in your dream?" Marle asked.

"N-nothing," Crono said, before realizing his body was stiff, and his back in particular hurt. The injuries Glenn dealt to him last night really had put a strain on his body.

_Last night..._

_Crono remembered the events of last night. "Glenn had come in his human form with a small army of fire skeletons, burned the castle down until it was nothing but ashes, killed many of the people inside (including King Guardia), kidnapped Ashley, went through a portal that shouldn't even exist after Lavos' defeat, and left Marle and him to die. Lucca and Fritz then came to save the day, helping the two limp out of the castle._

_"Lucca, we've got to go after him right now!" Crono told Lucca._

_"After who?" Lucca asked._

_"Glenn, our old friend! He's become a human!" Crono responded._

_"What are you talking about?" Lucca said, quite confused._

_"Glenn was the one who burnt the castle down and kidnapped our son! He escaped through the portal an-" Marle began before Lucca cut her off._

_"Both of you are obviously delirious. First of all, there's no way he could time travel after Lavos' defeat, and even if he could, we have no way of knowing what time period he travelled to at the moment. 2nd of all, I remember Glenn being a frog. 3rd of all, neither of you are in any shape to go after him right now."_

_"Lucca, you don't understand! We need to go now so we-" Marle started to say before Lucca used a sleep spell on both of them. With that, they fell asleep in the grassy area of Guardia Forest._

**ooo**

"Crono!" Marle called out.

Crono realized he had dozed off into his thoughts, and hearing Marle call out to him caused him to bolt his head in her direction. "Sorry."

"It's alright, but you need some healing right now," Marle told him.

"What about you?" Crono asked in a concerned tone.

"I already healed myself while you were unconscious." she said.

"Okay, I see," Crono said as Marle put her hands across his back.

He felt an aura coarse through his body, lightening the stiffness in his body. After a few seconds, he suddenly felt all better, and was in healthy condition.

"So, where are we now?" Crono asked

"We're upstairs at your mother's house. Lucca visited us a few minutes ago, and told me that we should all meet at the Snail Stop in a while. Well Crono, we should go now."

Crono got up off the bed, and followed Marle down the stairs. When they got down, Crono's mom greeted them by rushing over and giving them a group hug.

"I was so worried about you two. Are you alright?" she asked out of concern for her son and daughter-in-law.

"We're both alright, mom," Crono replied, hugging his mother tightly.

"I'm so glad both of you survived. I'm so sorry about the castle being burnt down," she said, tears flowing down her eyes.

**ooo**

Crono, his mother and Marle were sitting at the table eating their breakfast of fried eggs and toast with milk. Crono's first pet cat Tina passed by to lick Crono's hand. Crono rubbed her head and smiled at her. There were quite a few cats around the house, and even more of them hanging outside. The large amount of cats she had hanging around her caused Crono's mom to be called "the cat lady" often. Despite the suggestion from her son, she never ended up moving into the castle. Perhaps staying in her old house was a good choice, considering the events that unfolded last night. Crono looked at his mom for a moment. He knew he'd have to leave her again for a while, assuming he even returned.

"Mom, I have something important to tell you," Crono said to her.

"You're leaving to catch the people responsible for the castle burning down, aren't you?"

Crono looked down for a moment, and then nodded.

"Look, we know it's dangerous, but we have to do this. We can't just send our knights after them. I don't know how to explain it to you, but..." Marle said, pausing her speech at the end.

"You two are all grown up. You don't need my permission. If you must go, then you must go. I can't hold you back, what kind of mother would that make me?" Crono's mother responded.

"Thanks mom. I promise we'll return safely," Crono told her.

**ooo**

As Crono and Marle made their way outside, they spotted a large group of construction workers with safety equipment such as hard hats and goggles approaching, and they were led by the chancellor. The two of them ran over to the crowd of people.

"Chancellor, what's going on here?" Marle asked out of curiousity.

"King Crono, Queen Marle! Everybody bow in resp-" the chancellor began, trying to get the dozens of construction workers to show their respect for the king and queen of Guardia.

"King and queen..." Marle thought, "Whenever the king and queen die, the prince and princess take their place."

"There's no need for that chancellor. We'd just like to know what's going on here," Crono told him.

"Very well. I was going to ask for your permission, but since you were asleep, I decided to gather some construction workers to rebuild the castle as a surprise when you awoke. Of course, it won't be the same as the old one, and we've lost some irreplacable people," the chancellor started, "but I believe that King Guardian wouldn't want us to stall because of his death. We'll have a funeral for him and the other residents of the castle next week, of course."

"I see. I think my father wouldn't want to hinder us in his death, too. Feel free to build it as you'd like, we trust you chancellor," Marle replied, trying not to let tears slip with memories of her father coming to her head.

"By the way, where is Prince Ashley presently located?" the chancellor asked.

Both Crono and Marle's hearts suddenly skipped a beat. Crono did his best to keep a straight face.

"We sent him somewhere to be safe, to someone we trust. We can't tell even you, so I apologize. But it's alright, because he's fine," Crono answered. "Or at least, he will be soon. I hope..." Crono thought as soon as the words came out.

**ooo**

When Crono and Marle entered the Snail Stop, they were greeted by Lucca and Fritz greeting them by waving their hands at them. The place was empty aside from the four of them.

"Hey guys, we had the owner close this place for the day so we can't be overheard," Lucca replied, as if reading their thoughts.

Crono and Marle took seats on the barstools next to the two.

"So, Fritz and I have been working on repairing the Epoch all night. I swore I would never repair it again, but after your claims of Glenn coming here through a portal, I guess it was pretty much necessary, huh?" Lucca said.

"Lucca, you've been repairing the Epoch for us? Is it almost done?" Marle asked.

"As a matter of fact, we're nearly finished. I just need to make some minor adjustments, and we can visit Gaspar at the end of time," Lucca replied.

"Lucca, you're a genius! Thank you so much for helping us out," Crono told her sincerely.

"Anytime, but I'm just having a hard time believing that Glenn travelled here, and through a portal," Lucca began, "perhaps you could fill in the blanks for me."

**ooo**

After explaining to Lucca what had happened, and that they needed to get their son back soon, Lucca contemplated for a moment and then answered them.

"I see. Normally, I'd be finding this crazy, but I can tell both of you are being honest. It's not like both of you would have the same hallucination at the same time. But why would Glenn betray us?" Lucca said.

"Who knows? It's our job to find out," Crono replied.

Lucca nodded her head. "I guess you're right. Well, Fritz and I will be heading back now to finish working on the ship. Kill a few hours and meet us at my house," she told them as she got up.

Crono and Marle, had barely noticed Fritz, being busy explaining the story to Lucca, but Crono decided to acknowledge him.

"Fritz, thank you for your help earlier," he told Fritz.

"You're welcome, sir Crono, I was just repaying the favor," Fritz replied.

"There's no need to call me sir Crono, we've been friends since before I became king, remember?" Crono replied, showing that even after all these years, he still considered them to be pretty close friends.

Fritz chuckled a bit. "I guess you're right. Well, goodbye, s-s-... Crono, and-

"Just Marle is fine."

"Alright then. See ya!" Fritz called as he started walking outside.

Crono and Marle decided to leave the Snail Stop at that time as well, and as they came out, Lucca called out to them one last time.

"By the way guys," Lucca said in a loud voice, "the Epoch won't be taking off again."

"What do you mean by that?" Marle asked in a confused tone.

"From now on, we will be flying in...

**the Silverd.**

**ooo**

**Author's note: Well, it was a little late, but there's chapter 2 for you. How was it? R & R's are appreciated. Also, "Silverd" is the name of the Epoch time machine in the Japanese version of the game, and I just felt it was a better name than Epoch, which is only its name because you couldn't fit more than five characters in the English translation of the game.**

_To be continued..._


	3. The End of Time

**Author's note: Hello, it looks like I'm at chapter 3 already.**

**Anyhow, if you don't know what an ogan or kilwala is, please google it and don't sound like an idiot in the comments asking "What are these 'Kilwala' and 'ogan' creatures?"**

**The kilwala is Spekkio's second form, and the ogan is his third form.**

**ooo**

Crono and Marle made their way to Lucca's house. They knew Lucca and Fritz would be in the backyard and not inside the actual house; the Epoch, or rather, the Silverd, was too big to fit into the house. As they made their way over the small bridge, Lucca and Fritz approached.

"Well, we were about to go look for you, but you've just saved us the trouble," Lucca said, greeting them with a smile.

Crono and Marle smiled back. "So, you were about to come looking for us? Does that mean you've finished work on the Silverd?" Marle asked.

"You bet it's done! I've even managed to increase it from a 3-seater to a 4-seater, so now we can all visit Gaspar at once," Lucca told them.

"Impressive," Crono responded.

"Wow Lucca, you truly are a genius," Marle said sincerely.

"Well, I couldn't have gotten it finished so quickly without the help of Fritz. We assembled it together," Lucca replied.

"That's great," Crono began, "so does this mean you're coming with us on our journey?" Crono questioned Fritz.

"As a knight, it is my duty to serve you, so I will go," Fritz replied.

"Are you sure Fritz? This is going to be a very dangerous adventure. You might not even come back home," Marle warned him.

Fritz nodded his head. "I've already made up my mind. I've said all my goodbyes, and I'm ready to embark on this. I knew I'd have to risk my life ever since I became a knight, and I'll support you all the way through."

Crono smiled a bit wider. "I'm glad to have a subject and friend as loyal as you, Fritz. Have we all said our goodbyes?"

Everyone nodded at the same time. "Well then, we're ready," Lucca said, opening up the glass that kept the people inside the Silverd from falling out.

All four members of the party hopped into the Silverd, with Lucca being the pilot. After operating the Silverd to lift off of the ground, she blasted through time.

"Next stop, the end of time," Lucca said to nobody in particular as the SIlverd began its voyage through time.

**ooo**

The Silverd had landed. Crono lifted up the glass cover from the inside, and each of them hopped out. They were at the end of time. It hadn't really changed much since their last visit.

As they walked over to Gaspar, who was still standing in the middle of the room, Crono decided to awaken him.

"Hey old man Gaspar, are you still alive!?" Crono called out, startling the guru and causing him to fall backwards.

"C-C-C-Crono! You surprised me there," Gaspar told him, gasping for air on the floor.

"Sorry about that" told him, extending his arm which Gaspar grapped for support in order to stand back up.

"Well, this is certainly unexpected; I could've sworn the time portals closed once Lavos was defeated. How did you make it here, anyhow?" Gaspar asked.

"To be honest, it's kind of a long story," Marle said.

"In case you haven't noticed, I have all the time in the world. Here, let's have a seat as my assistant Spekkio pours us some tea," Gaspar replied.

"Yo Spekkio, we need 5 cups of green tea, a table and 5 chairs," Gaspar shouted loud enough for Spekkio to hear.

"Coming master!" Spekkio responded.

Within a few seconds, Spekkio came through the door across the room, pushing a table in the direction of Crono's gang. "Hey, is it just me or is you assistant a kilwala?" Fritz asked.

"Um... we're pretty sure it's just you Fritz. And besides that you just called yourself weak," Lucca replied.

"She's right," Spekkio started saying, "let's put it this way; if you're weak, I will look weak to you. If you're strong I will look strong to you."

To Crono, Lucca and Marle, Spekkio appeared to be a dark blue ogan (his 3rd weakest form); they had definitely let their power slip.

"By the way, you with the orange hair; you seem familiar. Would your name happen to be Fritz?" the guru of time asked the knight.

Crono, Marle and Lucca all turned their head to Fritz's direction, looking at him in shock over the fact Gaspar recognized him.

"How do you recognize Fritz?" Marle asked, a confused tone in her voice.

"Well, I can still remember the conversation we had upon your first visit here. Remember how I told you that the three of you and your robotic friend that someone came here before any of you?" Gaspar asked them.

"Come to think of it, I do remember you saying that. So that means that the visitor was... Fritz!?" Lucca said, amazed that he was the first one to reach the end of time, among the group at least.

"Yeah, I once stumbled upon a portal to, uh, 2300 AD I believe. It took me to the sewers, where I was stuck with nothing but a bolt sword I found in a nearby chest. I fought off some reptiles and ran away from some mutated fish, all while working my way through a puzzle involving locked doors. I even left a note at the entrance in case someone ended up there and couldn't figure out how to get through the sewers. I ended up finding another portal to the end of time, and Gaspar helped me get back to my own time period very shortly after I arrived here. I don't think I was even introduced to Spekkio," Fritz explained.

"Ah, it all makes sense now. I actually thought there was something odd about the note when I first read it, like how the writer felt the specific need to mention the guillotine, a device that's probably outdated in that time period," Lucca replied.

"Yeah, that was right after Crono rescued me from the corrupt chancellor, I was still a little shaken after what nearly happened to me," Fritz told all of his teammates.

"Wait, why would you never tell us?" Marle questioned him.

"Er- uh, well... you never asked," Fritz nervously replied.

"I guess we didn't, but we'd better get to more important matters right now," Crono said as Spekkio came back pushing some chairs over. Each person positioned their chair around the table and took a seat.

"Very well. You can start by telling me the tale of what happened since we last met; after all, that was what the original conversation was about before we had a dramatic subject change," Gaspar replied.

**ooo**

After Crono was done telling the story of how Glenn invaded Guardia Castle and kidnapped Ashley for whatever reason, taking a sip of tea between some every other part of the tale, Gaspar just looked down for a while, deep in thought.

"The portals reappeared despite Lavos' defeat. How can this be? Who or what could be responsible for their reappearence?" Gaspar thought.

"What are you thinking about, Gaspar?" Crono asked.

"Oh, it's nothing, really. Say, why don't the four of you go train with Spekkio for a little while? I'll be waiting here," Gaspar said, trying to dig deep within his brain to remember something.

With that, Crono and his gang decided to enter Spekkio's room. When they opened the door, Spekkio was wating for them, standing in the middle of the room.

"So, what do I look like to each of you?" Spekkio questioned them.

"Well, to me you look like a dark blue ogan," Marle told him.

"You look that way to me as well," Crono said.

"Unfortunately, our powers have slipped. Mine included, because you look like an ogan to me as well," Lucca replied.

"And how about the new guy?" Spekkio responded, looking Fritz in the eye.

"Why does it matter? Who are you anyways?" Fritz asked what appeared to be a white bird in his eyes.

"Why, I'm Spekkio, the master of war of course! I'm as old as time and as powerful as nature," he proudly stated.

Fritz just laughed a little. "But you're just a little kilwala, you're obviously kidding with me-"

Suddenly, a lightning bolt appeared right in front of Fritz's body, causing him to jump back, scared of what just happened.

"Didn't I already tell you that if you say I look weak, you're just insulting yourself? The stronger I look, the stronger you are. I weaker I look, the weaker you are," Spekkio told Fritz, the latter beginning to believe his words about being the master of war.

"Now, I don't believe you have magic abilities," Spekkio began, "so I'd like you to pace around this room 4 times."

Fritz didn't question Spekkio. He just followed order and paced around 4 times as everyone else watched. "Alright, I'm finished. Now what?"

Spekkio had a bit of a smile on his face. "You know, there's one magical element I have yet to give anybody. I think you may be the perfect person to equip with it."

"W-what do you m-me-" Fritz started to ask in a confused manner, before a transparent visual of rocks swirling appeared before his eyes. After a moment or two, the visual was gone, and Fritz could swear he wasn't hallucinating.

"W-what just happened?" Fritz asked nobody in particular.

"You have just acquired the ability to use the power of the earth. Now follow these hand gestures," Spekkio instructed.

Spekkio started doing some gestures with his hands that you might expect a wizard or perhaps ninja to do, and suddenly a rock was launched forward, just barely missing everybody's head. Although the rock wouldn't have hit anyone, they still felt the need to jump out of the away.

Fritz was too concerned with the fact a rock nearly hit him than the moves Spekkio just performed with his hands. "Careful with your aim, Spekkio! You could've blown our heads off," Crono called.

"What's going on here? Why do you want me to do those things with my hands?" Fritz asked in shock.

Lucca decided to help Fritz out and speak to him. "Fritz, you have to do manuever your hands in that sequence, and you'll be able to project the power of earth at your enemies. Do you understand?"

Fritz nodded. "I think so. Alright, can I see the move again?"

Spekkio complied and showed him the hand gestures again. Fritz, being a quick-learner, managed to copy the moves, ending with his hands spread out in front of him.

"Now, imagine a stone being thrown. Don't go overboard though, you probably don't have enough power to created a boulder or anything," Spekkio explained.

Fritz nodded, and imagined a small rock being thrown in front of him. With that, a rock was launched in Spekkios direction.

"Oh no, look out!" Fritz called in a panic, fearing the rock would hit Spekkio.

Spekkio just stood still, and a fiery aura appeared around Spekkio's body, burning through the rock before it even came into contact with his body. "Didn't I already tell you? I'm the master of war," Spekkio bragged.

**ooo**

After training for a while, everybody stepped outside, each of the party member stepped back into Gaspar's room. As soon as Crono took his first step through, Gaspar called out to him.

"Yo guys, I have some news for you," he said to get their attention.

Everybody went back in their seats, and listened to Gaspar speak.

"Guys, Lavos is gone, so that means it couldn't be responsible for the reappearence of the portals. So there's only one person who could have done this," Gaspar told them.

"We're listening," Marle replied.

"I remember a legend from long ago. Lavos was no ordinary alien creature; it was constructed by someone in the cosmos. This man had the ability to time travel, and made a home above the skies of our planet long ago when ice was delivered to this planet by meteors and melted into water. He was responsible for the first lifeforms here. Of course, most people thought of it as mere mythology even back when it surfaced, but... what if it's true?"

Everybody was having a little bit of a hard time following the story. "Wait, what do you mean this could be true?" Crono asked.

"Well, one day I ended up traveling back in time a few million years for whatever reason, probably out of boredom, and I heard the story from some villagers. The story has been long forgotten by time, probably for its ridiculousness, so it's impossible to hear this story anywhere in your current era. The story came so out of left-field, and was so odd, however, that one must wonder if it was the man from space spreading the story to gain attention and be worshipped, not some random person who thought of a creative story. By all accounts, the man was unusually dressed, to the point it seemed he was wearing clothes from around Magus' timeline."

Crono was having an odd feeling in his gut. "By any chance, do you know what he looked like?"

"Why, I'm pretty sure I do. After viewing several sketches, it appears that he was a large, tan and muscular man. He was apparently wearing golden armor from around 12000 BC, which means he was almost certainly a time traveller. The man in space's name was Cronus," Gaspar explained.

_A large, tan and muscular man, clad in golden armor named Cronus (A name very similar to Crono). Could it be..._

Crono looked down at the table, his eyes seeming to stare through. His whole body was shaking.

"Crono, what's wrong?" Marle asked, obviously worried.

"It's him..." Crono said under his breath.

**ooo**

To be continued...


	4. Ioka Village

**Author's note: In case you hadn't figured it out from chapter one and the fact that Crono's official age is 17 in Chrono Trigger, this fanfic takes place about 3 years after Crono and Marle get married. This is also why the characters will be travelling 3 years after dates in the game such as 65,000,000 BC. I hope that will prevent confusion. Also, I'd like to point out that Earth in Chrono Trigger is **_**way**_** smaller than our Earth.**

**ooo**

"It's him? What do you mean by that?" Fritz asked.

"The man in my dreams. Gaspar, your description fits the description of someone I met in one of my dreams. It can't be a coincidence, I just know it!" Crono exclaimed.

**ooo**

After Crono calmed down and explained the situation, everyone was puzzled.

"So, let me get this straight. There was a myth around the time Ayla lived, and you believe the man who spread that myth is the same man who haunts you in your dreams?" Lucca said.

"It sounds a bit stupid, but yes that's pretty much the case," Crono replied.

"Hmm... this is indeed bizarre," Gaspar said, "I'm not quite sure what to tell you next. Perhaps you could visit Ayla and ask her a few questions?"

"I don't think we should. I mean, we have some more important things to do, like rescuing our son," Marle pointed out.

"No... I think it's a good suggestion," Crono responded.

"What are you talking about?" Marle questioned him.

"I just have a gut feeling that maybe if we find out who this guy is, we'll get answers somehow," Crono told everyone.

Lucca nodded in agreement. "I think we should give Ayla a visit. Crono is our leader, and if he says we should go somewhere, I'm all in favor of following him."

"I understand Crono. If you think this will help us out in the long run, then perhaps we should go," Marle agreed.

**ooo**

While Fritz stayed behind to practice magic with Spekkio, Crono travelled to Ayla's village in 64999997 BC via the Silverd with Marle and Lucca as company to visit some old friends at Ioka Village.

"Be sure to land this away from the villagers; if they see this time machine it could reshape history in a negative way for all we know," Lucca commented as Crono was preparing to land near Ayla's hut.

"Right," Crono responded before reversing the Silverd a bit to the point it was near a forest and nobody was likely to wander away and spot it.

After a bit of walking, they were in front of Ioka Village. Many tan-skinned villagers wearing animal fur as clothes stared at them as they approached. Plenty of villagers were outside their huts, and for good reason; it was summer, and thus the perfect season to be outside exercising.

"Crono back!" one of the little boys (who seemed to be around 8 or 9 years old) shouted in the silly caveman dialect Crono's team recognized, clearly excited to see old friends of Ayla reappearing after all these years.

All of the other residents of Ioka Village who happened to be outside all cheered at Crono and his friends, with most of them saying "Yay," or "Crono back," like the little boy did.

Hearing the noise that surfaced outside, the other villagers came out of their huts to see that Crono and his teammates finally returned. They too joined in on the celebration until Ayla and Kino stepped outside.

_Tap, tap, tap_

As soon as Ayla tapped her staff on the floor several times, everyone went silent. It was in the same fashion a judge would hit his hammer against his desk and yell "order in the court."

"Welcome back friends," Ayla greeted them.

Kino was standing next to her, holding a baby wrapped in an animal fur blanket in his arms. Both he and Ayla were wearing nut rings on their ring fingers.

"Come in hut with me, we talk a bit," Ayla told them.

**ooo**

Crono, Marle and Lucca were happy to comply and go in the chief's hut. After some discussion about how Ayla and Kino had gotten married since the group's last visit, Ayla had given birth to their first child, and how the villagers were living in a peaceful environment, Crono decided to ask what he had come to this time period for in the first place.

"So, I heard a rumor about a man named Cronus who lives above the sky in outer space and shaped life on this planet. He also apparently had the ability to time travel and formed Lavos. Does any of this seem familiar to you?" Crono asked.

Ayla paused for a moment before recalling the time someone told her about a man who spread that story. "Yes, it old legend. Real big tan man the size of two adults wearing funny clothes, even funnier than you wear, went around telling story. No one believe him."

"Well, don't you think its strange he was wearing those clothes, or that he was so large?" Crono inquired.

"He probably just from other village with other weird-looking people; he probably tell story hope for us worship him and give present," Ayla countered.

"Yeah, but-" Crono began before getting cut off.

"Hey Ayla, I just realized that Crono and I have something to discuss. Can we talk to each other outside for a minute?" Marle asked.

"Yes, I count to 60," Ayla replied. Clearly she did not understand the phrase "for a minute" didn't mean exactly sixty seconds, and the rest of the population probably didn't either. But that was besides the point.

"Okay. Come on Crono," Marle said, grabbing Crono by the hand and taking him outside. Crono wasn't sure what this was about, but he figured he may as well go.

When they got outside, Marle led Crono behind the hut so nobody exercising outside was right near them, allowing potential eavesdroppers. Marle then started speaking. "Crono, this story got lost in time because nobody believed it. If you were to try and convince Ayla it may be true, she might believe you and have everybody else believe it. I mean, we're seen as heroes around these parts, I'm sure pretty much all of them would believe everything you say. Just think about how this could reshape history for a second."

Crono realized that Marle was right and he should probably leave the topic at that. He had gotten confirmation that the "myth" was really told to people in this era and Gaspar wasn't fooling around. As far as he was concerned, he was done here. They went back inside and Ayla greeted them. "That 28 seconds not 60. Even better."

Crono and Marle nodded. "Well, we kind of just had to ask you about the story. Right now we have an important mission to complete," Crono told the couple.

"So this mean you leave now?" Kino asked.

"Yes, it does. But I promise we'll visit again soon, okay?" Crono replied.

Ayla smiled. "Understood. Good luck to you."

The gang smiled back. They weren't going to bother asking Ayla if she wanted to join them for another quest. She was too occupied with her duties as the chief of Ioka Village, and besides that she was a mother now. "And good luck leading the villagers, Ayla. Good luck to your relationship, and good luck raising your child, too, " Marle sincerely responded.

**ooo**

After saying goodbye to Ayla and Kino, along with the villagers outside, promising they would be back soon, they travelled back to the Silverd and blasted to the end of time.

When they got back, they gathered around the table with Gaspar again. Fritz was still with Spekkio, training to use his earth-elemental magic.

"I see you're back," Gaspar greeted them.

"Yeah, we just visited Ayla and confirmed that your story was really told in that era," Lucca responded.

"That's good. So, did you learn anything?" Gaspar inquired.

"Well, Ayla believes that the man was from another village or something where they make strange armor and the people tend to grow gigantic, but there's no way there were humans who invented golden armor 65,000,000 years in advance. We've travelled all over the planet in Ayla's time, and never once have we met any human wearing anything more advanced than fur clothing; we didn't just circle around the planet a few times, we actually flew around and stopped in countless spots looking for some useful materials or villages to buy items from. Hell, Ioka Village was the only village we found that managed to develop a language at that point. So the theory he was a human from their time who just made up the story doesn't make sense. Chances are, if that man truly was the Cronus he described in his story, he travelled back to his own time," Crono elaborated, barely even stopping to take breaths between his speech.

"Interesting story, Crono. Does it give you an idea of where to go next in your journey?" Gaspar asked him.

Crono nodded. "Yeah, I think I have a pretty good clue as to where this man may reside, judging by the description of the gold armor and all."

"And where is that?" Gaspar asked out of curiosity.

Crono looked Gaspar in the eyes with a straight face, confident he knew what the perfect time period to go next was. "I have a hunch that he's in 12000 BC."

**ooo**

Is Cronus real, and if so does he have any involvement with Ashley's kidnapping? What events will unfold when the team travels back to 12,000 BC?

_To be continued..._

**ooo**

**Author's note: Well, there were three rather boring chapters of exposition in a row. For those of you eager for more action and the appearance of two certain fan favorite characters, stay tuned.**


	5. The Search for Schala

**Author's Note: Hey, sorry for being late on this chapter. It took a while, but it's also extra long, so that should make up for it, right? Also, I'm co-writing a fanfiction with my friend called "Super Smash Camp", a Super Smash Bros story. You can find his account on this website, he goes by "BloodRedPrince". Once again, italics are used to show sound effects, dreams and flashbacks (emphasis on the last one) in this story. **

**ooo**

_FWOOOOOOOSH!_

The Silverd had shot through time again, and there they were now hovering high above the spot they remembered as the Last Village in 12000 BC. Fritz was left behind at the end of time while Crono, Marle and Lucca traveled to this time period to search for Ashley, Glenn and possibly this mysterious Cronus person. Crono was the pilot.

The Silverd had shot three years into 12000 BC, thus making this 11997 BC. The area was no longer just a huge amount of white snow with nothing other than a few tents; it had evolved into something more. There were now several gray buildings complete with noticable windows and doors, trees had grown and were covered in snow (the trees were no doubt there thanks to the woman they told to hang on to the seeds), and the population had visibly gone up considering all the people noticable outside wearing winter clothing.

"Well, we're here in 12000 BC, or 12003 BC I should say. What should our first step be, Crono?" Marle asked.

"I think we should find Magus. He might be able to help us out somehow," Crono suggested.

"Not a bad suggestion, but how are we going to find him?" Marle asked.

"I'm not sure myself, but we could always look arou-" Crono began to reply.

"The chip!" Lucca called out.

"Pardon?" Marle responded.

"Do you remember how Magus would often drift away from us when he joined our team?" Lucca asked.

"Yeah, it did get annoying at times," Crono replied.

"Well, I know how we can locate him. After the third time he ditched us, I planted a chip on him, and I still have a navigating system with me that we could use to find him. It's kind of like a compass; there's an arrow on the screen that shows which direction we need to go to find him. Hopefully he still has the same cloak I planted the chip on. It's really small, so there's a chance he hasn't noticed," Lucca explained.

"That's interesting, where did you get that technology anyways?" Crono questioned.

"I snatched one from the Derelict Factory back in 2300 AD, but that beside the point. Let's see if we can find him," Lucca replied.

With that, she turned on the radar, and got a signal pointing to the north.

"He's right in this area. Fly north a little bit, I'll let you know when to land," she ordered him.

**ooo**

As the old bald (other than his beard) bartender was preparing beer for one of the men sitting at a barstool, the door to the entrance of the bar opened. An extraordinarily pale muscular man walked into the bar, his long blue hair and red cloak swayed as he walked. He walked up to the barstool and took a seat, resting his black scythe with a dark gray and bloody blade against the bar. The bartender and the man who ordered the beer were staring at this strange character, as were all the other people inside the building.

"I'll have some mead. Make it quick," the stranger demanded as he glared at the bartender with his green eyes.

"Y-you got it," the bartender nervously replied, beginning to prepare it.

Everyone was talking about the stranger under their breath, and he just ignored it, grabbing his mead and drinking it when it came to him.

While taking a sip, the man next to him started speaking. "I bet you think you're tough, don't you?"

The man didn't even avert his eyes to look at the punk taunting him. He was quite large and hairy, having a buzzcut and beard, both of which were black. He was also tall and buff, wearing a white tanktop and black pants and boots.

"You've got nerve to ignore me," he told the mysterious man.

Still no response. He just continued drinking his mead.

"Who the hell do you think you are!?" the large muscular man yelled in frustration at the cloaked stranger, still failing to receive a response.

"You punk! Nobody ignores the mighty Spade!" he shouted, causing an even bigger scene as he swung his left fist at the silent man.

Without so much as turning his head, he grabbed Spade by the wrist and started crushing it. Groaning in pain, Spade raised his right fist and was about to punch with his other hand, but the man on the barstool simply raised him over his head and flung him against the wall, crashing into the wooden wall.

"Mister Spade!" two people called out in unison, presumably his henchmen.

With that, the mysterious person gulped down the rest of his mead, got off his barstool and turned towards the thug he just defeated effortlessly. As he started walking towards Spade's injured body, his henchmen ran at him with knives in their hands. Practically ignoring them, he just put his left hand behind his back and launched two balls of ice at them. The ice hit them, thus knocking them back and freezing their bodies. They lied on the floor shivering as the mage walked towards Spade with his scythe in hand.

Just then, the door opened once again. None of the people in the bar looked back at the three party members for more than a second. There was too much drama already going on for them to pay attention to the fact that three random people just showed up.

"Magus!" Marle called out, causing the mage to look back.

"Y-you! What are you doing here!?" Magus reacted in surprise, "Nevermind that right now, I have other business to attend to at the moment."

Towering over Spade, he pulled him up from the floor and held him by the shirt.

Spade looked at the man's left cheek in fear; there was a tattoo in the shape of a spade. "W-what's going on here!?"

"Here's the deal; you talk, you live."

**ooo**

Magus had brought Spade inside the bathroom and locked it. The bartender had talked the three party members into leaving them alone; Spade was a thug who bullied citizens of Last Village, along with his colleagues Ace, King, Queen and Jack. Nobody would dare oppose him due to how powerful his colleagues were, not so much because Spade was powerful. He often came and collected tribute from everyone, and people who didn't pay tribute would get punished. After hearing the story, the three of them suddenly weren't so eager to save him from Magus.

"I-impossible! I saw you die before my very eyes!" Spade said, clearly not able to accept the fact Magus was in front of him, alive and well.

Spade's hands were tied behind his shirtless back, and he was standing on a chair with a rope around his neck. All Magus had to do was kick the chair, and Spade would be hung to death.

"I must admit, you almost got me. However, I don't die very easily," Magus said. "I remember the event like it was yesterday."

**ooo**

_**12000 BC**_

_Lavos was gone. All this time, Magus' goal was to have his revenge against Lavos. Weeks if not months had passed and he just felt he no longer had any purpose. With Lavos out of the picture, what was he to do? He remained inactive after Lavos' defeat, doing nothing other than hanging upside down in a dark cave. That was when he had the dream..._

_"Janus..." a familiar voice whispered._

_"Janus..." the voice called out slightly louder._

_"Janus!" the voice yelled._

_"Schala!" Magus shouted. Looking around, he realized he was just dreaming, and he shouted his sister's name as he woke up._

_"Schala..." Magus thought to himself when suddenly he realized what his new purpose in life must be, "That's it! She's my sister, and she could still be alive! I need to search for her!"_

_Hopping down from the ceiling of the cave, he privately looked down at the floor in shame, "I let my desire for revenge take priority over my care for her. I... I won't make that mistake again! Schala, I'm coming for you!"_

_**ooo**_

_Magus had been in a bind searching for Schala. None of the citizens of Last Village knew where she was or even had any clues, and the only place left to search for him was the mountain nearby, and it was gigantic. Three years passed by without luck; all he could find was monster after monster; not a single clue to Schala's location. If she had been teleported to this mountain by the last portal she went through, there was pretty much no chance she was alive anyhow. Thus, he returned to Last Village and saw that it was more developed. Between the trees, buildings and clothing the people were wearing, it was hard to believe this was the same place he lived three years earlier._

_The population of Last Village, earthbound ones and magic users, had put their differences aside to make this a damn fine place. As he walked through the village, he witnessed a large man behind a building beating a young woman to a pulp. Normally Magus wouldn't have cared, but seeing this event, and seeing how much the girl looked like his sister with her long blue hair, purple clothing and fairly pale skin, Magus couldn't stand to see it. _

_"This is your lesson for not paying tribute, you little bitch!" the man shouted at the poor girl, who was crying heavily at this point._

_Just as she was about to suffer a blow to the head, Magus charged in, created a fiery aura around his fist and punched the man as hard as he could in the stomach, thus sending him flying back into a brick building and getting his clothes set on fire._

_"Mister, t-thank y-you! Y-you saved my life! How could I ever repay you, sir?" the young woman asked._

_"By getting the hell away from here," Magus replied._

_She nodded. "Yes sir," and with that she was off._

_After rolling around in the snow and screaming, the man was no longer on fire, but he lost his coat in the process and was now freezing. "You bastard! Do you know who I am!?"_

_"Don't know, don't care," was all Magus said._

_"The name is Spade, bitch!" he screamed as he dashed at Magus and attempted to give him a right hook, but Magus ducked down and proceeded to sent him flying upwards with an uppercut to the face._

_Spade was on the floor, defeated and barely conscious._

_"Next time, don't expect any mercy," Magus said as he left the man on the ground, bleeding from his nose._

_**ooo**_

_After going through another day without any clues as to where Schala may be, Magus was losing hope. While walking across the village to the location of his cave, he suddenly felt a punch to his back, thus sending him flying forward through the air before he managed to flip and glide along the floor._

_Looking behind him, he saw a man clad in yellow. He was about six feet tall, skinny, pale, had green eyes, blonde hair, wore a yellow cape that was pretty bright and was also wearing a spandex bodysuit that was just as bright as the cape alongside yellow leather boots. There was Spade, standing right beside him._

_"Greetings, it appears you are the one who attacked Spade yesterday. Unfortunately for you, Spade and I will have to take you out, nothing personal of course. You can call me Jack," the man in yellow introduced himself. He was rather polite for someone about to kill another person, and his voice was quite low and calm._

_"That's right! We're gonna tear you a new one, you ba-" Spade began before being hit with a lightning bolt by Magus and getting knocked back unconscious._

_"Oh, it looks like I actually wasted a lightning bolt on an annoying insect," Magus taunted._

_Jack actually laughed a bit at that comment. "He's the weakling of our group, that's for sure. But at least he can get the dirty work done. Now, prepare yourself!"_

_Magus pointed his finger at Jack. "Dark surge!"_

_A dark wave of energy came out of Magus' finger, and suddenly a surge of energy that looked much like a lightning bolt shot at Jack. It shot out extremely fast, and yet Jack had managed to not only dodge, but somehow seem to disappear._

_"Huh!? Where did he go? Surely I didn't zap him out of existan-" Magus started to think before getting that familiar punch to the back. This time, he was too surprised to get back on his feet, and he fell headfirst into the snow._

_Turning around, he saw Jack towering over him. "H-how did you-"_

_"I probably shouldn't be revealing this to you, but since you're going to die in a moment, I may as well inform you I have the power of teleportation. It allows me to disappear and then reapp-" Jack tried informing him before getting cut off by a sudden surge of lighting level two and getting knocked back, giving Magus the moment he needed to get back up._

_"Now that was truly dishonorable, good sir," Jack said with a straight face as three more people showed up._

_"Well, if it isn't the man who defeated Spade," a man who looked very similar to Jack (but was wearing violet clothes and had dark skin in addition to brown eyes) said as he walked in Jack and Magus' direction along with his partners._

_"Not to mention he just landed a blow against Jack. Not too bad a feat if I do say so myself," commented a slightly above-average sized man with long blonde hair, somewhat tan skin, a light-yellow toga, black shades and sandals._

_"This man must be insane to come out here wearing this little clothing," Magus thought right before __a red aura appeared on the man's body. It was clearly his source of heat. "I guess he doesn't need winter clothing then."_

_The man aimed his fist at Magus from afar, causing a large pillar-like wave of fire to shoot horizontally at Magus. Magus jumped to his left as quickly as he could and fell headfirst into the snow again, but in the process of dodging, he accidentally dropped his scythe to the floor. He just barely survived. A second off and that blast might have burned him to a crisp._

_"The name's Apollo, but you can just call me King. This is my sister Aphrodite, but she prefers "Queen", and that guy in the violet is Ace. You picked on the wrong group of people, and now you're toast," King shouted, with nobody around to hear him since they were all at a remote location near a cave._

_As King raised his hand again to burn Magus to death, he was interrupted by a tall woman clad in white camouflage with white hair (which seemed strange as she was visibly not very old) tied into a ponytail. "Wait a minute, King. Isn't there something odd about this person?"_

_King paused a second. "Come to think of it, there's definitely a resemblance between him and lord Ryaka's favorite slave."_

_"A resemblance between their lord's favorite slave and me? Could they mean..." Magus thought._

_"Schala! You mean Schala, right!?" Magus shouted at them as he tried to get up before getting pinned down on the floor by Jack._

_"Yes, Schala! That was her name! You must be related to her or something, right?" King replied._

_"Let her go, or I swear I'll-" Magus tried to threaten before getting interrupted by King, Ace and Jack's laughter._

_"Let her go or what? You'll kill us? If you haven't noticed already you're not in any shape to be threatening us," King replied._

_"Ryaka sure has a thing for her. She's even on her way to having a rape baby," Ace told Magus, with all of them (besides Queen and Spade of course) having another round of inappropriate laughter._

_"You fucking bastards!" Magus yelled at the top of his lungs. He tried to get up, but Jack still had him pinned._

_King, Ace and Queen began walking towards the pinned mage. "I'll hold him up. Come on gang, let's teach him a lesson!" King told them._

_King stomped on Magus' left arm, thus breaking it while Magus screamed in agony. King proceeded to stomp even harder on Magus' right arm, breaking it as well. With that, Jack got off of him and allowed King to hold him up from behind with his arms wrapping around Magus'._

_The savage beating began with Jack punching Magus in rapid succession on the stomach, with Magus coughing out blood between every few punches all while groaning in pain. Jack ended his turn with an ultra-powerful punch to the gut._

_"AAAHHHHHHH!" Magus cried out, coughing out even more blood._

_That's when Ace stepped in. Ace wasn't too fast, but he certainly made up for it in power, punching Magus as hard as he could in the face and breaking his nose. Magus screamed out again, blood falling down his nose._

_"On the count of three, let go of him, King," Ace told his partner, with King nodding in response._

_"One," Ace began creating an aura of lightning around his right fist._

_"Two," Ace had charged his fist with a great amount of lightning and was ready for a powerful punch._

_"Three!" Ace called out as King let go of Magus and backed up._

_With that, Ace punched Magus in the chest with an incredible amount of force, shocking him hard enough to make him scream more loudly than ever before as he collapsed in the snow. _

_"Ah, don't die on us now," Spade said in a mocking voice as he came by and kicked Magus hard enough to flip him over. He had regained consciousness._

_"What's the matter, Queen? Aren't you going to join in?" King asked._

_"Hmph, this is a bit too tasteless for me. Go ahead and beat him to death, I couldn't care less," she replied._

_"Well then it's more for me!" Spade called out as he stomped on Magus' chest, making him scream in pain once again._

_King held Magus up once again as Spade came by. "All you got on me were two lucky shots! Any last words?"_

_Magus simply spit blood in his face and agitated him one last time "Fuck you!"_

_The blood had hit Spade's eye, and he started yelling at the top of his lungs. "AAAAHHHHHH! My goddamn eye! You bastard!"_

_In fit of rage, Spade grabbed Magus' scythe off the ground and gouged Magus' left cheek, forming a spade-shaped scar that caused him to bleed more."There's something to remember me by when you go to hell!" Spade shouted as he grabbed Magus out of King's arms and threw him into the insanely cold ocean that covered almost all of the planet. _

_SPLASH!  
_

_Everyone watched as Magus fell into the water and splashed a bunch of it at them. _

_"There's no way he can survive that," King commented._

_With that, they were off._

_**ooo**_

_"I'm dying..." Magus thought to himself as he sank deeper and deeper, gradually drowning, "No... I must save Schala! I can't die yet! There's only one way I could possibly survive at this point."_

_With no other option, Magus froze himself in a block of ice, causing him to start floating._

_**ooo**_

_Sherry Lyoko was watching the ocean when suddenly a large block of ice started drifting her way. "That's odd," she thought._

_As the block of ice came closer and closer, she realized that there was a person encased inside the ice, and furthermore, it was the man who saved her life a short while ago. "Oh no, I better go alert grandpa!"_

_**ooo**_

_Sherry and Mr. Lyoko, with the help of a few other villagers, managed to get Magus out of the water and into Mr. Lyoko's house. Thankfully, Mr. Lyoko was a doctor, and he managed to thaw Magus out of the ice by placing him next to the roaring fire in his chimney. Eventually, Magus was thawed out, and he was in terrible condition. Both of his arms were clearly broken, he had quite a few open wounds, his clothes were stained with blood much like his skin, __Mr. Lyoko didn't know whether or not this man could pay him back, but that didn't matter at the moment. After tending to his wounds with bandages and casts, he left the unconscious mage on a bed in a blanket._

_When Magus awoke, he tried sitting up, only to realize he was in terrible pain. Hearing his scream as he tried to get up, Sherry Lyoko raced into the room and found him lying on the bed. Magus looked into her eyes, shocked._

_"Y-you're that girl I saved. W-what happened?" Magus said, before suddenly remembering the group that attacked him when he was last conscious._

_**ooo**_

_While explaining the story about how they saved him, he didn't say a word, nor did he speak after they finished the story._

_"So, how did you get trapped in that ice?" Sherry asked, seeming to be a bit excited._

_"I can't tell you," Magus replied with a straight face and an emotionless voice._

_"Why not?" Sherry questioned further._

_"Now, now, Sherry, if he can't tell us, he can't tell us," her grandfather told her._

_"Alright, fine," she said._

_"Thanks for the treatment, but I can't pay you back," Magus told them._

_"Actually, that's quite alright," the old man sincerely said, "My granddaughter Sherry says you saved her from that thug Spade. Without you, she might not be here right now, and her life means much more to me than any amount of money."_

_"So I guess we're even now," Magus responded moments before falling back to sleep._

_When he awoke, he felt bad about the fact he was resting when he knew his sister was suffering elsewhere, and after a brief struggle to get out of bed, he was just barely standing up. As he attempted to make his way to the door, it was opened by Sherry._

_"Hey, you're supposed to rest now," the pale blue-haired girl told him._

_"I can't; my sister is being held as a slave by those thugs and-" Magus tried to tell her before she gently pushed him back onto the bed._

_"Look, there's no sense in fighting them now. If you go out there in the shape you're in, you'll end up worse than before, mister- er, um..." the girl said, trying to remember his name at the end._

_"Magus," he responded._

_"Pardon?"  
_

_"My name is Magus, and there's no need to call me mister."_

_She nodded her head. "Right! Just listen to me, alright? Don't go throwing your life away now. I'm alive because of you, and I can't let you die because of me."_

_Magus reluctantly agreed with her, and knew that he simply had to rest until he had fully recovered._

_**ooo**_

_After six weeks, Magus was fully healed, and he needed to go find his sister; there would be no more delaying it._

_It was midnight, and both the Lyokos were asleep. Carefully, he made his way to the front door and exited the house, being sure not to make any noise. He walked over to the bar, climbed the ladder to the roof that was located on the wall to his left, and looked down at the ground, waiting for one of the members of the team that attacked him to walk in. When one came in, it would be time to execute his plan._

**ooo**

"Well now Spade, you just need to answer my questions, and I'll let you go," Magus told him.

"Like hell I will! If I talk, my teammates will inflict more pain than you could imagine on me! Besides, you don't have the balls to kill me! You'll only kill me if and after I talk!" Spade shouted.

"You're forgetting two things Spade. I'm sorry, you probably can't even count to two, and don't know how many things that is. Here, two is this many," Magus said, holding up two of his fingers, "First of all, it's not like you have any other choice. Either you talk and possibly die, or you don't talk and certainly die. Second of all, you seem to think that you're the only one who could give me the answers I need, when really I could just wait until another member of your team shows up and interrogate them, so honestly your life isn't that precious to me, not even at this moment. Therefore, I'll give you ten minutes to talk."

Spade was scared out of his mind, visibly wetting his pants in front of Magus.

"Alright, you win; what do you want to know?" Spade asked.

"For starters, your friend King said something about your lord Ryaka having a slave named Schala. Where is this Ryaka person located?"

"Alright, he lives in a small continent on the exact opposite end of this planet. He has a giant palace built there that takes up almost all of the continent, and he has his own village nearby. You can't miss it, but I don't think you'll be able to reach it without a boat or the ability to fly. We always get teleported here by Jack or flown here by King. We don't travel here ourselves. This time I was left here by Jack, and he said he'd come get me in a few hours," Spade answered, "Any other questions?" .

"Actually, I only have one more," Magus replied, "Did you really think you could live after telling me all this? I told you that next time I beat you, I would show you no mercy."

"W-what!? NOOOOOO! Don't do this! You said I could live if I-" Spade tried to protest before Magus kicked the chair away, thus dropping Spade down with the rope around his neck, just barely hanging off of the floor. Spade began to start struggling and kicking the air, trying to get the rope off of his neck.

"I said you could possibly live. I never flat-out said you would live if you told me everything," were the last words Spade heard.

Walking out of the bathroom as Spade was dying, everyone was staring in his direction. Crono, Marle and Lucca were obviously a bit disturbed, but most of the other people were probably happy Spade had been taken care of.

"Alright team, let's go," Magus said to the three of them, acting nonchalant about the fact he just murdered somebody.

**ooo**

As Magus walked outside the bar with his comrades, they noticed that a person was looking at the Silverd; it was Sherry. Upon noticing Magus, she turned to him and ran towards him.

"Magus, it's you! Why did you just ditch us so suddenly?" she questioned him, sounding a bit angry. She was wearing her purple clothes that reminded Magus of Schala's.

He sighed. "Look, thank you for your help as well as your grandfather's, but right now I have to go. Just take this," Magus said as he handed her something from his pocket.

"A sack of gold?" she said, surprised, "It's okay, really! We didn't need any paymen-"

"Take it anyways, I actually got it from Spade. Let's just say that he won't be bullying anybody here ever again," Magus replied.

"T-thank you," she said in response.

"Anytime, just don't tell anyone about this airship, okay?" Magus said.

Just like that, the four party members hopped on. There wasn't much space, but Magus managed to squeeze in.

"So where to?" Crono asked, getting ready to fly the Silverd.

"Just keep flying straight. You won't be able to miss the palace when you see it," Magus replied.

Crono nodded his head and began flying. "By the way, what's with that woman you just talked to?"

"Yeah, and what's with that spade-shaped scar on your left cheek?" Marle asked.

"Please don't ask," Magus replied to them, and with that it was silent.

"We're coming for you Ryaka," Magus thought to himself as they flew closer and closer to his continent.

**ooo**

Who exactly is this Ryaka person? Will the team be able to defeat the people who took down Magus? Stay tuned.

To be continued...


	6. Enter Ryaka

The four time travellers sat down in the Silverd, Crono flying them towards what was allegedly Ryaka's palace. Thanks to the size adjustment Lucca had made, the Silverd could now easily fit all four of them. Crono opened his mouth to speak but was immediately interrupted.

"How did the three of you come here?" Magus questioned them from out of nowhere.

It was strange to hear Magus start a conversation, but Crono was quick to reply."It's kind of a long story, but Glenn came to Castle Guardia, killed many of the people in it, burned it to the ground with his army of fire skeletons, and then ran away with our son. The strange thing is, not only did Glenn betray us, but he was in his human form, and if I remember correctly, the only way to remove his curse would be for him to kill you."

Magus just sat in silence for a moment before Lucca decided to tell the rest of the story. "That was when we rebuilt this the Silverd here and flew to the end of time. There's a man named Cronus who we're looking for, but we're not even sure if he's real. The only reason we came here to look for him is because it's the closest thing to a lead we have."

After another awkward moment of silence, Magus spoke again. "I thought you called this the Epoch."

"Figures that would be the only thing you listen to. Anyhow, the Silverd is the new name, so we would prefer if you address it as such," replied Marle.

"Hmph, well since you told me your story, I'll tell you what the purpose of our trip is. You see, I've been looking for Schala for a while now, and I now know where to find her. You're going to help me save her," Magus casually informed them.

Just like that, an extraordianarily large white palace high enough to make the Silverd look low in the sky came into view. It was enough to put Castle Guardia to shame. In front of it were somewhat noticable (but incredibly small by comparison) wooden building and houses. They were even more old-fashioned than the buildings from 600 AD, with plenty of scratches in the wood. There were even some buildings that didn't have doors but rather curtains, so it would seem that almost all of the effort was put into the palace. It was all on one large piece of frozen land.

"Land right in front of the palace, I've been waiting a long time to get my revenge on these bastards," Magus told Crono, who was looking in awe along with his female teammates.

"I take it these 'bastards' are the members of the Clan of Cards the bartender told us about," Crono stated as Magus' words shook him from his feeling of amazement and back into reality.

"You would be correct," Magus confirmed, "And without you I won't be able to defeat them. Now listen up, there are at least five members, if not more. I already took care of one of them, so unless there are more members of their team, we'll have an even number of opponents. Jack isn't particularly strong, but he makes up for it with his amazing speed and ability to teleport. Ace is pretty slow from what I've seen, but his punch will probably send you flying through a wall, not to mention the fact he can use magic. But it would seem neither of them are as tough as King or Queen. King can use fire naturally and is probably even stronger than Ace, but Queen is an enigma. I have not seen even a glimpse of her power."

Magus' three partners nodded.

"Thanks for the heads up, Magus," Marle told him as Crono began to land the Silverd.

"I'm not saying this to help you, I'm saying it to help me, so there's no need for thanks. Now let's go!" Magus declared.

**ooo**

The four party members walked up the white-colored wooden stairs, approaching two tall pale-skinned men around Magus who were attired in dark black tuxedos. One of the guards had short black hair with hazel eyes, while the other had long white hair with blue eyes.

"Halt! Who goes there?" the black-haired man demanded of them.

"We're friends of Ryaka," Magus answered.

The two guards looked at each other and nodded. "Then surely you know the password."

Magus sighed and shook his head. "I tried to be nice."

"What are you talking abou-" the white-haired man began to say before being punched in the face by Magus and then thrown on top of his partner with enough force to make both of them to crash through Ryaka's fancy double doors.

"Well, looks like the doors opened up," Magus commented as he looked through the hole he had just created in the middle of the 20-feet long double doors. "Let's go."

The hole wasn't exactly big enough for them to just walk through casually, but all they really had to do was manuever their bodies through it similarly to the way one would pass through a window.

Once they were inside, they were greeted by a nicely lit room with a large red carpet spread all over the floor. Candles were spread over the ceiling, and there were a few more guards in tuxedo blocking the staircase.

"Freeze!" a few of them called in unison. All of them had their swords pointed right at Crono and his teammates. Thankfully, they were spread about seven meters apart, so the four of them had a long-range advantage.

"How about no?" Magus said, infuriating them.

As the dozen or so sentries charged at the four party members, Crono aimed his sword at the floor, charged it with electricity, and slashed the air, causing a fairly wide wave of lightning to fly at three of the guards. One of them jumped out-of-the-way and hit the wall, but the two others weren't so fortunate and got shocked, allowing Crono to leap towards them and deliver a roundhouse kick to the one on the left, knocking him backwards on the ground. The one to his right was then treated to a knee to the gut followed by an uppercut to the chin, causing him to be knocked down right next to his partner.

Meanwhile, Marle and Lucca started charging their spells as the men came closer and closer.

"Someone's gonna freeze alright, but it won't be us!" Marle shouted as Lucca and she cast their fire and ice spells together, hitting four of the sentries who were barely a meter away from piercing through their bodies.

Half of them screamed and attempted to stop, drop and roll so that they would stop burning, but being on a flammable carpet only made things worse for them. The other half were encased in a layer of fairly thick ice.

"Dark Mist!" Magus called as he cast the spell, causing the five men standing in his way to stop in place since a large amount of mist covered them completely..

"My eyes!" several of them called out.

The five of them proceeded to start spinning around and swinging their swords out of panic, to the point that they just sliced each others throats, chests, heads, and limbs. This caused every one of them to start screaming as their blood flew all over the room. With that, they fell down one-by-one in a huge dark red pool of fresh blood.

"Fools," Magus said to nobody in particular.

The last sentry who had managed to dodge Crono's last attack looked in horror at his dead comrades. "Oh no! Lord Ryaka is gonna be pissed about having his room stained!"

Crono was disgusted at that last line. "Your teammates just died and you're worried about the room getting stained!?" he shouted as he punched him as hard as he could in the face, blood flowing from the man's nose whilst a couple of teeth were flying out.

Marle and Lucca stared in horror at the mess in the room. They had never seen so much blood before, let alone human blood.

Magus didn't mind the blood so much and scanned his surroundings. There was a hallway leading to a kitchen to the right.

"There probably isn't anything interesting, but just in case..." Magus pondered.

"Let's check the kitchen, for all we know our enemies could be hiding inside it," Magus ordered as if he was now the party leader. Crono didn't particularly mind being ordered by someone like Magus, after all he was older and had more experience; he knew much better when it came to anything combat-related.

Following his lead, Crono along with his wife and childhood friend went inside the beautiful chrome kitchen. It was quite bright considering that the light was on, so there was a chance someone was inside. There was a sink, a stove, tables with silverware, and pretty much everything you'd expect from a regular kitchen, but the fanciness of the kitchen wasn't anybody's concern at the moment. However, that was The four of them opened all the cabinets and closets they spotted.

"It doesn't look like anybody's here," Crono commented.

"That appears to be the case. Come on, let's jus-" Magus began before suddenly a green acidic fluid that looked like saliva fell to the floor dangerously close to his right foot.

All of them looked up in fright to see a gigantic chameleon-like creature with spiky skin. It suddenly jumped right off the ceiling and crashed onto Magus, pinning him down and grazing his skin with its spikes. Magus looked into its sharp teeth, pure black skin, and its faceless head, which contained nothing but a mouth and two ears on the side.

"Damn it, if this blasted thing's spikes stab any further into me, I'm done for!" Magus thought as it began to drool more of its toxic saliva.

"Ice sword!" Crono and Marle called in unison as Crono leapt at the monster with his ice-charged weapon. The creature turned around and hissed as Crono knocked it across the room as hard as he could, shattering the ice around the sword.

Magus jumped up and prepared to finish it off, but it was quick enough to jump away and pin Marle down. Marle looked in more horror than ever before as the thing leaned its head back and hissed. It was clearly getting ready to feast on its next victim.

"NO!" Crono shouted at the top of his lungs as he fired off a surge of electricity at the monster.

"Lightning level two!" Crono called out, suddenly recalling his long-forgotten spell out of panic.

The large surge of lightning was bigger than the target's body (and this creature was tall enough to put Magus to shame, not to mention that it must have weighed more than all of them combined), and it was enough to make it jump up in literal shock, screaming in a high-pitched voice as it shook violently from the lightning that coursed through its body. After a few seconds, it fell backwards, dead silent.

The group looked at the spiky chameleon-esque animal's dead body and was disturbed by its appearance. They had never quite encountered a monster like that before, and it while Crono, Marle and Lucca were scared by what they had just seen, Magus of course had his mind focused on other matters.

"Something isn't right here," Magus told the team, "Why were we ambushed twice? Surely Ryaka isn't the kind of person to just leave a dangerous animal in his kitchen casually."

"Yeah, now that you mention it, I did find it strange how as soon as we entered a bunch of guards were lined up waiting for us," Lucca commented.

"The only possible explanation I can think of is that someone knew we were coming. But how would they know we were headed for this place?" Crono pondered.

"Perhaps they found Spade's body and figured someone might come after them next," Marle suggested.

"Maybe, but my gut is telling me otherwise. Let's just go up the stairs; perhaps we'll find answers soon," Magus replied.

**ooo**

"Lord Ryaka, the intruders have managed to defeat the guards and chameleon," Queen informed her superior.

Ryaka sat in his shiny golden throne, looking into the crystal ball on the table in front of him. Queen was sitting on a dark wooden stool facing the opposite side of him, and in front of her was the table. Jack had indeed discovered Spade's corpse earlier, which prompted the Clan of Cards to set two traps in case the intruders found the palace and attacked. Her power being telekinesis, she could read the minds of the intruders, and right now she happened to be reading Magus' mind. Inside the crystal ball was the kitchen from Magus' field of vision, complete with sound in the background so that the entire party's conversation could be heard.

"If I had known that man with the long blue hair would show up, I would have put more effort into traps to dispose of him. He truly was powerful to survive the beating we gave him last time," Jack commented.

"The resemblance between Schala and him are uncanny. This is the man you told me about, correct?" Ryaka questioned.

King looked his lord in the eye through his sunglasses. "Yes my lord, I'm not certain whether he's after us or his Schala, however."

"Hmph, isn't it obvious? He's after both you and her," Ryaka replied.

"You are correct, my lord. From reading his thoughts, I have determined that he plans to kill us and rescue her. She is apparently his sister, and it seems that the only two interests he has at the moment are rescuing Schala and having his revenge against us," Queen pointed out to both of them.

"I see, so they're siblings, huh? Well if you listen to me, he'll give up without so much as a struggle."

"My lord, you don't mean using her as a hostage, do you?" Ace asked.

"Of course. She has already given birth to my son. As far as I'm concerned, her life no longer matters," Ryaka informed him.

**ooo**

Crono and company were heading up stairs and were getting near the top. Nearly every room was either empty or just filled with people who were hiding in fear. They were almost certainly just innocents staying over at the castle for one reason or another. Wearing gowns and hats of orange fur along with violet-colored shawls wrapped around their necks along with gloves of the same color, their clothing made it obvious they weren't the villains the team was looking for. With The noise they had made earlier in the assault sort of ruined the element of surprise, but it didn't matter too much. They had entered a few rooms full of sentries, but they were disposed of easily.

The final step. Crono put his left foot on it and noticed the lack of red carpet. There was merely dark brown wood. However, the floor above the last step was completely covered by violet carpet. There were three doors to choose from; two average-sized white-painted wooden ones to the left and right, and one in the center that was tall and wide, not to mention made completely of gold.

"I'll bet the one in the center leads to Ryaka's room. Come on," Magus told his partners as he turned the golden knob and pushed the door forward.

Since the door was wide enough to fit them, all four members stepped through at the same time and were taken aback by the room with its golden chandelier hanging a few meters off the ceiling, which was over twenty feet high. As nice as the clear windows, violet carpet and walls, the neat flag behind the golden throne with a red N-shaped lightning bolt, realistic paintings of nude women and the overall design of the room were, what really caught the attention of the team was the man sitting on the shiny golden throne who appeared to be about Magus' size, but a bit more muscular.

"Nice of you to visit," the man greeted them with a smile on his face.

He appeared to be in his thirties with a dark black short boxed beard and long hair of the same color that went down to his shoulder. He was dressed in an elegant velvet robe that covered all but his black boots and head, where he wore a golden crown with a shiny emerald jewel in the middle. To his left were Ace and Jack. To his right were King and Queen.

"I take it that you're Ryaka," Magus said.

"That's Lord Ryaka to you!" King shouted out.

"Now now, King, there's no need for formal titles at the moment," Ryaka replied, still grinning politely, "So, what was so important he felt the need to barge into my room?"

"My sister. Where is she?" Magus demanded.

"Sister? I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about," Ryaka lied to agitate him.

"Her name is Schala. I suggest you tell me where she is and get that shit-eating grin off your face," Magus calmly replied.

"Oh! You must mean my favorite slave," he responded, still with that shit-eating grin on his face, "Jack, please bring her in."

"Yes, my lord," Jack replied, taking a step back.

Jack simply reached to his right and pulled up a person who was previously sitting on the floor, hidden behind the throne. There a very pale slim woman she stood, adorned in purple robes with long blue hair tied using a red ribbion. Both of her eyes were closed, and tears were even coming out. She was visibly shaking.

Immediately everyone recognized her. "S-Schala!" Magus called out to her.

Enraged, Magus blindly charged at Ryaka with his scythe held out. "You filthy animal!" he yelled before stopping dead in his tracks.

Jack was holding Schala by the throat, and Ace was guarding Jack as King jumped to his left to protect his lord.

Ryaka sighed as his brown eyes met with Magus'. Ryaka had lost his grin, and was visibly no longer amused. "That's a cheap trick, let her go and fight like a man!" Magus yelled out.

"Fight like a man? You mean the same way you were about to just up and stab me with that scythe of yours without so much as allowing me to stand up? You truly are a fool," Ryaka taunted.

Magus angrily looked him in the eye. "My sister, how did you find her? More importantly, what have you done to her!?" Magus shouted.

"He... he called me sister," Schala thought, "Could it be... J-Janus?"

_**ooo**_

_**12,000 BC: The aftermath of Lavos' awakening**_

_"I teleported everybody away, I hope they're safe," Schala thought to herself._

_The one known as Crono had just sacrificed his life to save his friends. Schala, not wanting these strangers to be killed by Lavos, used her magical abilities to transport them to somewhere safer. She wasn't sure where everyone ended up, but hopefully it would be somewhere safe. _

_Schala herself wasn't sure where she was. She didn't see Janus, or anyone else she just saved for that matter. It was nothing but an island of ice. Granted, it was probably big enough to fit a town or two, but it was still nothing but an empty island of ice. The best word to accurately describe how it felt to be stranded there would probably be "freezing." Perhaps "lonely" would also be fitting. Her pendant wouldn't be recharged for a while; all she could do now was wait for it to be usable again so she could transport herself elsewhere._

_For hours upon hours she sat there, trying her best not to freeze. The wind kept blowing the fires she started away, and her clothing wasn't exactly fit for the winter. Out of nowhere, something began to rise from the water. Schala stared straight ahead, not sure what direction she was facing. An aura of lightning began to appear in the water, and within a minute, a huge black airship flew into the air, beginning to float. In awe, Schala witnessed the Black Omen's appearance._

_Somehow, Schala was not spotted at all. Several times, the Epoch flew by, but nobody spotted her on the freezing island. She didn't blame them for it, it would be nigh impossible to locate her just by looking out a window. "Just a while longer, then I'll be able to get away," Schala thought to herself._

_Within an hour or two, Schala witnessed the Black Omen falling down, back into the ocean once again. Down it sank into the water. It was almost a sure thing that the Black Omen was destroyed by Crono's team._

_Thankfully for her, the pendant would soon be ready to use again. Perhaps she would find the group that took down the Black Omen and ask what happened; perhaps she would even find her brother. However, a new portal appeared about ten feet in the sky above her out of nowhere soon after the Black Omen sank.  
_

_Nine strangely attired people landed in the snow as Schala looked in their direction. All of them were wearing white full-body suits that covered all but their eyes, mouth and nose. They all stood in a horizontal line, their backs facing Schala. Each one of them had a red symbol on the back of their suits that took up nearly their entire backs. Each of the symbols were clearly inspired by a deck of cards._

_One man had an ace, another had a spade. There was a man with a jack on his suit, while someone else had a king. There were evens ones with symbols of a club and a joker. The group didn't consist entirely of men, however; there were two women. One of them sported a diamond symbol, while the other had a queen symbol. By far the most peculiar, however, was the man in the middle of the line. The back of his suit had a generic red lightning bolt on it; there was no theme to it, really. Perhaps it was to show he was the leader? After all, he was standing in the middle._

_Before Schala even realized it, they had started a conversation._

_"So, this the dump that Cronus gave us? How generous of him," Spade sarcastically commented._

_"Come now, Spade. I'm sure we'll be able to make this into a great civilization," Ryaka told him while turning around to see a woman in purple._

_"H-Hey, who are you and what are you doing here?" Ryaka called out to her._

_Schala was startled when the stranger called out to her like that. "I need to get away right now!" Schala desperately thought to herself; better to risk teleporting somewhere dangerous than deal with what seemed to be a bunch of thugs. _

_Luck was on Schala's side for now, as her pendant recharged its magical power at that very moment, and she quickly transported herself away as the group stared at the spot she was just sitting at. They were all dumbfounded._

_"What the hell was that, anyways?" King said to nobody in particular._

_"I'm not sure. We can leave her be for now, but later I suggest you start looking for that woman. She had an interesting ability there, and to be honest I quite liked the color she was wearing," Ryaka replied._

_**ooo**_

_By luck, Schala had ended up in Last Village. Seeing her out in the cold, an old man offered her shelter inside a hut. Knowing she would die if she stayed out much longer, she accepted his offer and slept on the floor inside his hut for the night. There were no blankets, nor was there a mattress, but she could deal with sleeping on the floor._

_When she awoke early in the morning, she walked outside and saw just what was left of the world; Last Village. Pretty much all of the technology from Zeal was now gone. Now, there were merely enlightened ones fighting with earthbound ones._

_No matter how hard she tried, Schala couldn't shake the thought of those strange people, but she figured it would be best not to dwell on it and just look around for her brother or at least one of the persons she rescued from Lavos so that she could figure out the confusing events that recently occurred. _

_"I was probably just hallucinating," she kept thinking to herself in regards to the group of people that appeared soon after the Black Omen went down. Maybe the idea wasn't so ridiculous; after all, she did sit in one place freezing for several hours._

_**ooo**_

_"You damn earthbound bastards! This is all your fault!" Dalton yelled angrily at a group of people wearing dark green clothing._

_"Do you really think you're so perfect? Our prosecution was completely uncalled for!" Retorted a teenage boy who had been born into the earthbound lifestyle._

_"Fool! Do you really think you have the right to call yourselves human? Frankly, all of you disgust me!" Dalton screamed as he raised his fist to shoot fire at the young boy, who opened his eyes wide in fear._

_"Come on, talk back to me again; I dare you!" Dalton taunted a group of them as they walked backwards; they now had something to shiver about besides the cold weather._

_As Dalton pointed his finger at the helpless villagers, he suddenly heard a familiar voice call out to him._

_"Dalton, that's enough!"_

_Everyone turned to see Schala. "P-Princess! You're alive!" Dalton called._

_"Yes, and I expect you not to hurt those people," Schala told him._

_"B-But princess! These fools are-" Dalton tried to explain._

_"Just end it!" Schala interrupted, causing him to look down in shame._

_"Now, I'd like to know what's going on," Schala said._

_**ooo**_

_"So, this Black Omen... was mother on it when they invaded it and destroyed Lavos?" Schala asked, clearly shaking despite being in a fairly warm hut with a roaring fire._

_"Almost certainly, princess. Or should I call you 'queen' now?" Dalton replied._

_Schala's eyes opened wide in shock. "M-Mother... no..." she said aloud._

_"And it was all their fault!" a young former earthbound one shouted at the princess in anger._

_"Our fault!? Maybe if you weren't so worthless, you could've saved our-" Dalton began to argue before being interrupted._

_"Stop this at once!" Schala called in a state of anger and sadness, tears rolling down her eyes._

_Everyone looked at her, stunned. "Nobody is to blame! If we want to improve our lives, we'll have to work together and stop pointing fingers," she said to everyone in the hut._

_"Princess..." an enlightened one said quietly._

_Everyone realized that Schala's words were quite wise, and shouldn't be taken lightly. Everyone except Dalton, that is._

_"This is absurd. I'm leaving you fools," he said as he walked outside._

_"Dalton, come back here at once!" Schala ordered as she ran after him._

_Stepping outside the hut, she saw Dalton walking away, not even paying attention to her._

_"Dalton, wait!" she called as she approached him._

_He stopped suddenly in his tracks. "What the hell do you want, traitor?" he angrily asked._

_"Look Dalton, I can't help it if you want to leave, and while I don't really think you have anywhere to go, I'm not here to change your mind. I just need you to tell me one more thing," she said, with him not even turning his back._

_"Go ahead and ask," he replied._

_"The people who defeated Lavos; where are they?" Schala asked him._

_"Hell if I know; they haven't resurfaced here, and with that time machine of theirs, I seriously doubt they'll return. They're not even in this time period," Dalton answered._

_"And what of Janus?" Schala further questioned him._

_"He's probably dead."_

_With that, Dalton was off. _

_**ooo**_

_Dalton had decided to just walk away from everything. "How dare she side with those damn commoners," Dalton thought to himself as he created an ice bridge for him to walk across._

_He wasn't sure where he was going, but he didn't care. He just wanted to be away from them. As far away as possible, at that. Using his ice magic, he had managed to gradually create a bridge as he walked across the ocean, when suddenly he spotted a group of people on a somewhat big island of ice. They were obviously in the middle of a conversation, all of them sporting odd symbols on their back. Dalton could recognize all of the symbols; eight of them were based off card designs used for card game decks, but one person (probably the leader) had an N-shaped lightning bolt._

_"Who the hell are they?" Dalton thought to himself._

_As Dalton approached, the man with the lightning bolt on his back turned around. "Why, if it isn't another visitor," Dalton heard him say, with the other proceeding to turn around._

_"Another visitor?" Dalton said to himself, "These people could be dangerous. I'll have to be cautious."_

_"Come, join us!" he called out to Dalton._

_Still on guard, Dalton walked over to them. "Who are you, and what do you want?"_

"Well for one, we'd like to know a bit about this world," he told Dalton.

_**ooo**_

_About one week had passed, and Dalton still hadn't returned. Everyone figured he had drowned or met a similar fate, but Schala wasn't so sure. Regardless, she didn't let his unknown whereabouts distract her, and led the charge to start fresh a new civilization. A few more huts were built for temporary housing, trees were being planted, and buildings were under construction. There was thankfully plenty of fresh water in a nearby glacier to retrieve via boats, and with the invention of fishing poles, there was plenty of seafood to go around. For once, the enlightened ones and the earthbound ones were working together._

_"Queen Schala, we've caught an entire bucket of bass!" one of the old fishermen reported._

_"Excellent job. Be sure that the children are fed first," Schala ordered him as she roasted the last load over a fire._

_"Yes, my queen!" he responded as he ran outside of Schala's hut, presumably to go to the hut to the east with an unoccupied fire._

_As she turned her head back to the fire in front of her, a loud noise was heard outside._

_BOOM!_

_"What was that!?" Schala called out, not receiving any response but audible screaming._

_With that, she ran outside to see a familiar group of people, some laughing and others keeping a straight face in front of the corpse of..._

_"Dalton!" Schala yelled out, seeing him lie in a pool of his own blood._

_She ran over to him and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Dalton! Dalton! What's going on here!"_

_"It's no use, my dear queen. He's gone," the man in the middle informed her._

_"W-Who are you, and what is your business?" Schala asked, trembling in their presence._

_"Come on now, surely you recognize us. You can call me Ryaka, and this is the Clan of Cards. This Dalton person told us everything we would ever want or need to know about you and the people here," Ryaka said to her._

_"Why are you doing this?" Schala asked him, tears flowing out of her eyes._

_"That's actually a funny question. I don't think I could give you a good answer, to be honest, but I do know that I want you to be my queen," he told her, them looking eye-to-eye._

_"We won't let our queen become yours!" the same old fisherman yelled out as he charged at Ryaka, a knife aimed right for his heart._

_Before the old man could stab the newly encountered enemy, a large man standing behind Ryaka to the left hit him with a large wave of fire, and after a few seconds of screaming, nothing remained but ashes. Upon witnessing the horror, Schala and the rest of the villagers stared at the empty spot in shock._

_"Now come with us," Ryaka demanded from her._

_"Like hell!" Schala screamed as she shot a powerful lightning bolt at him, "Lightning level two!"_

_Ryaka simply stood still and took the lightning bolt as though it was nothing. "I am not amused," he said flatly, aiming his arm at a group of the children who were watching the events unfold._

_"Perhaps these children will convince you to be mine," he told her as he started charging an electric surge._

_"Wait! Don't hurt them!" Schala begged at the top of her lungs as he was about to kill them. _

_She realized she couldn't defeat him; after all, he didn't even flinch when he was hit with one of her most powerful spells, and he had eight lackies surrounding him._

_"Why shouldn't I hurt these precious little children?" Ryaka questioned her, "You were quick to try frying me with lightning! What do you offer in exchange for their lives?"_

_Schala looked down for a moment, the other villagers running in front of the children to protect them, not that it would work since the surge of electricity would likely just pass through them and take their lives along with the children. There were several adults screaming to protect the children, but there were also a few who ran away like cowards._

_"I... I'll be yours," she muttered._

_"What was that? I have trouble hearing sometimes," Ryaka taunted as he continued to charge his lightning surge in front of the crying children and adults who repeatadly tried to reassure them everything would be okay._

_"I'LL BE YOURS! JUST LEAVE THE CHILDREN ALONE!" Schala yelled as loudly as she could, tears flowing out her eyes._

_Ryaka smiled at that last comment. "You made the right choice."_

_**ooo**_

_Over the next few years, hundreds of slaves from Last Village were forced to work on Ryaka's castle and village. The Clan of Cards also worked to make things finish more quickly, with Ryaka overseeing the creation of his new village and castle on the glacier they originally came from. The years were brutal for the slaves, all of whom were constantly whipped if they didn't work fast enough. Some were even killed if they failed to do a certain amount of work in one day. Everyone but the Clan of Cards, Ryaka and Schala were constantly starving and thirsty._

_As for Schala, she was forced to be Ryaka's wife, serving as the queen. Throughout all these years, she was often forced to whip the slaves herself, with Ryaka threatening them with death if she didn't did what she was told. Of all the things that happened to her over the years, such as being raped and having two miscarriages, finally giving birth to a child that was simply killed off for being a girl, being separated from her brother without the ability to look for him, her pendant being taken away from her and watching the occasional execution, nothing seemed to make her feel worse than whipping the people who were loyal to her, some of whom were mere children. The fact that she was always fed and had good shelter that wasn't crowded didn't comfort her one bit; most of the time she only ate because she was pregnant, and it was for the baby. In the end, however, Schala was merely one person Ryaka and the Clan of Cards put through hell._

_**ooo**_

_Three years. Three long, brutal years. That was how long it took for Castle Blackjack and the nearby buildings to be constructed. If it weren't for the fact Diamond found the remains of the Black Omen some time during the first year and brought them to the surface with his telepathic abilities, production wouldn't have been even less smooth, and definitely not as quick._

_About sixty-five percent of the survivors were allowed back in Last Village, though they'd have to pay tribute often if they didn't want dire consequences. Despite the constant threat of Ryaka, they managed to make the village quite decent over the next year or so, if only because they were motivated by the fact it was what Schala would want._

**ooo**

"Brother!" Schala called out, opening her eyes to see Magus in front of her, holding his scythe.

"Now, isn't this a touching family reunion?" Ryaka sarcastically said, "Now, please be a good guest and drop the scythe if you don't want to lose her again, Magus. Or should I say Janus?"

Frustrated, Magus threw the scythe on the floor. "The same goes for all of you," Ryaka informed Crono and his partners.

Crono dropped his katana over Magus' scythe, Marle dropped her crossbow to the left of it, and Lucca just tossed her gun a few centimeters away from the pile of weapons.

"Good, now follow me," Ryaka told them, getting up off the throne.

**ooo**

Ryaka had led them to the arena, with King, Ace and Queen holding on to their weapons and walking behind Jack, who was holding onto Schala's neck, ready to snap it if they were met with any resistance.

The arena was an oversized indoor stadium with tiers of seats for spectators. There were about ten columns and sixteen rows of chairs, all of them allowing spectators to see the fights that took place from the front angle akin to a theater. The field was surrounded by extraordinarily tall yellow brick walls, with a steel locked door to prevent the fighters from leaving. Crono and Magus were in the middle of the wide open field, standing on a floor of wood. Ryaka stood in front of them, while a large audience (about half the chairs were filled, four of them by the Clan of Cards members, and the rest by villagers interested in seeing this fight) sat waiting for the fight to begin. Marle and Lucca were chained up against the wall east of the steel door, their necks and feet being cuffed.

"Alright, now what do you want? Will we go up against the members of your Clan of Cards or something?" Crono asked.

Ryaka chuckled a bit. "Well, that wasn't quite what I had in mind."

Ryaka walked up a few steps until he was at his regular seat smack in the middle of the chairs. "Now ladies and gentlemen, prepare to see the fight between Crono and Magus!"

With that, the audience started cheering, some even yelling that they want blood. "What!?" Marle and Lucca yelled in surprise, both of them getting very worried about what was about to happen.

"What the hell are you talking about!?" Crono screamed at him once the crowd stopped cheering.

"You two _will _fight to the death. Otherwise, consider her life fortfeit," Ryaka called loudly enough for them to here, obviously referring to Schala.

Crono turned his head and looked Magus in the eye. They didn't need words. They already knew a fight would be inevitable. There was no talking out of it. "Get on with it already!" an audience member called out to them, with several other joining in.

"Yeah, fight!"

Crono was nervously shaking, but Magus kept a straight face. "Are you ready for this?" he said to Crono.

"Not even any 'I'm sorry to do this, old friend'?" Crono thought, "I've heard of people being stone cold, but this guy is something else!"

With that, King tossed Crono his katana, and Ace tossed Magus his scythe. Both of them picked up their weapons and got into their fighting stance before Magus spoke.

"Alright Crono, let's do this!"

**Author's note: Well, there you go, what did you think?**

Once again, I'm sorry for the delays, and the fact my updates keep getting further and further apart. Pretty soon I'll be the Kentaro Miura of updating, heh heh... seriously Miura, I'm still waiting for the next update of Berserk.


	7. Decisive Battle

**Author's note: Well, it looks like I'm late again. I swear it's not easy to juggle three projects during your spare time when you have to work.**

**Then again, this chapter would take **_**20 pages **_**to print, as opposed to the 13 pages my last chapter took. Oh yeah, did I mention that it was well over 10,000 words (longer than my first four chapters combined)? As you can tell, I put a ton of work into this chapter.**

**Oh well, I hope you'll enjoy this more action oriented-chapter; I sure had fun writing it, and maybe you'll have fun reading it.**

**Also, I'd like to point out that "Valkerye" is intentionally mispelled; I'm sticking to the SNES' names.**

_**ooo**_

_"Lucca," Fritz said to Lucca, "Can I ask you something?"_

_They were at Lucca's house, assembling the broken Epoch for the next adventure. Fritz was in his casual clothing consisting of white pants and a blue tunic._

_"Go ahead, Fritz. You can ask me anything," Lucca replied._

_Fritz nodded and looked down. "Lucca, do you think... do you think I'm a failure?"_

_Lucca looked at her friend in surprise. Fritz wasn't looking up; he was looking down at the screw in his hand. "Fritz, what are you talking about?"_

_"I failed to save the king among other residents of Guardia Castle, not to mention that Guardia Castle itself was burnt down. If only I had gotten there sooner. If only..." Fritz told his best friend as a few tears made their way down his face. He still wasn't looking up, but his voice clearly had a sad tone to it._

_She could see him crying. She too was upset about the events the night before, but she tried as hard as she could not to dwell on it. Seeing Fritz crying about it, she couldn't help but feel sorry._

_"Fritz, it's not all your fault. __**We **__should've gotten there sooner. What am I saying? None of it was our fault. Besides, without you I might not have been able to beat those skeletons. They would've killed Crono and Marle," Lucca said to comfort him. _

_Fritz didn't look up. "Yeah. I guess you're right."_

_Lucca got up from her spot opposite of him, tossing aside the piece of the Epoch she was working on attaching to the wing. She walked over to Frtiz until she was standing right in front of him. Noticing her shadow, Fritz looked up to see her as she began to sit down on her knees. "Lucca, what are you-" he began before being interrupted._

_As soon as he started speaking, Lucca wrapped her arms around his back, embracing him warmly. Resting her head against his left shoulder as she hugged him, Fritz looked down into her purple hair, noticing she wasn't wearing her helmet at the moment._

_"It's okay Fritz. Everything will be alright. Everything..." she whispered into his ear._

_At this point, she too had tears flowing down her cheeks. Seeing her cry, he hugged her tightly. He'd rarely been hugged before this point; he remembered his sister Elaine hugging him when he got back from the Guardia prison, and an instance dating back over a year ago where Lucca hugged him after he helped her repair Gato's arm. He had forgotten the feeling, but he realized it was quite comforting when he was down._

_"Lucca, thank you."_

**ooo**

Crono looked Magus in the eye intensely. Magus, on the other hand, seemed to have a casual look in his eyes, as if he was about to fight a generic monster. Neither of them really registered the cheering for blood in the background; all that mattered was the fight. There were a few different possible outcomes to this fight. Regardless of the victor, Schala's safety wasn't exactly guaranteed, and for that matter, Lucca and Marle might not be spared. None of that mattered at the moment, however; there was no other choice. If they refused to fight, all five of them would die right then and there.

"Alright Crono, let's do this!"

Crono raised his sword as Magus aimed his scythe. "I guess you won't be showing me any mercy," Crono remarked.

Magus' expression didn't change, but he lowered his left hand along with his scythe as he raised his right hand, beginning to create an icy aura.

"I'll tell you what; just fortfeit the match and I'll give you a quick, painless death. You can't defeat me, especially not by yourself. Just face it already. This is my gift to you for letting me fight Lavos with your group," Magus offered.

"Heh, as much as I appreciate that offer," Crono began, "I'll have to PASS!"

As soon as he let the last word out, he rushed over to Magus as quickly as he could and punched him with full force. Once Crono's left fist connected to Magus' right cheek, Magus was knocked back a good meter or two, letting go of his scythe as the crowd's cheering became even more heavy than before. It was the sight of first blood, and the audience loved it.

Crono stood still, holding his trusty katana known as the Rainbow. He could still remember the day Melchior created it for him. Magus lay there on his back, eyes closed.

"Surely it can't be this easy," Crono thought to himself.

After a moment of Magus remaining down on the ground, Crono approached him. As he set his sword down and crouched to check for a pulse, he felt a hard fist shoving itself in his gut.

"Oof!" Crono let out as he was sent flying back.

Magus had turned the tables around, and now it was Crono lying a few feet away. Magus was the one towering over him as he approached. Crono starting shaking in fear as Magus walked closer. He had dropped his katana, and he couldn't focus on using magic.

"Get up. I was hoping you of all people wouldn't resort to such a cheap tactic," Magus stated coldly.

Crono was in shock. He expected Magus to pick up his scythe and stab him in the heart, but it looked like he wanted a fair fight. "R-Right," Crono said aloud as he got up.

Magus took a couple of steps back as Crono did the same. Schala simply watched in horror. It was like a trainwreck; she really didn't want to watch, but there's no way she couldn't.

"Janus," she thought, "Even with your dramatic change in appearence, I can tell it's you. All this time, I was hoping that someone would come and save everyone, but if my freedom comes at the price of another person's life..."

"Prepare yourself!" Magus shouted as he charged at Crono and began punching rapidly at him.

All Crono could do was block with his arms while Magus hit him with a barrage of punches. There was practically no chance to counterattack from this position; Magus was too fast. The only chance Crono had was to dodge.

While blocking the insane amount of attacks, Crono noticed that Magus' legs were spread apart. "Maybe I can take advantage of that opening," Crono thought.

In the blink of an eye, Crono ducked and rolled forward through the space between Magus' legs, leaving Magus surprised. Before he even had the chance to turn around, Crono had roundhouse kicked him near his spine, thus knocking him down onto the ground face-first.

Marle and Lucca watched as Crono charged his fist with lightning. "Damn it!" Lucca exclaimed, " No matter who wins, it won't end well."

"Lightning fist level two!" Crono called out as he brought his fist down on Magus' back.

"AHHHH!" Magus cried out as he felt electricity flow through his body.

"Damn you!" Magus shot at Crono as he jumped back up and performed a spinkick.

Magus' right foot hit the top of Crono's right arm, knocking the swordsman back to the side. The hit left him holding onto his right shoulder with his left hand and grunting in pain.

Magus began to charge each knuckle on his left hand with a different element. On the knuckle of his pinkie was an icy aura, fire for his ring finger, water for his middle finger, lightning for his pointer finger, and of course shadow on his thumb.

"Elemental fist!"

After the declaration of his attack, Magus thrust his fist straight into Crono chest.

"GYAAAAAH!" Crono screamed in pain as five different elements surge throughout his body.

Even while shaking and screaming from the intense pain while standing straight, Crono could still see Magus flying straight at him with his foot out.

"Guh!" Crono coughed out along with his blood as he was flying back further than ever before.

Magus' kick had caused Crono to crash straight into the wall that was five meters away, and it felt as though the bones in his back had just broken as he hit the wall. There he was, stuck leaning against the wall and breathing heavily, with difficulty moving his body due to the pain.

"Heh, and here I thought they might be on the same level," Ryaka commented, "Schala my dear, what do you think?"

"T-This is awful. Why must you do something like this?" Schala questioned him as tears continued flowing from her eyes. She wanted to do something to stop it, but if she tried anything, not only would she be killed, but also the two women who were serving as her brother's teammates.

Ryaka merely laughed. "How could I not? This is great entertainment. Just listen to the crowd. They certainly agree."

"Finish him!" one man shouted.

"Burn him to death!"

"Freeze him and then crush him to a thousand pieces!"

"Don't let the fight end so early, you stupid ginger! Get up and let there be more blood!"

Schala listened to the crowd's cheering, and it disgusted her. Looking down, she thought to herself. "Why? Where did everything go wrong? These people... they're no better than _him_! No, he corrupted them! These people... surely they couldn't have been this cruel!"

Crono was barely conscious at this point. He was quickly falling into unconsciousness, his eyes closing slowly. "Finally, some peace," Crono thought to himself. Falling asleep right here and now was going to take the pain off his mind.

Marle and Lucca could see Magus pick up his scythe. He was walking slowly to Crono's body. As nervous as Lucca was, Marle was more upset.

"Crono..."

Crono could feel himself faliing asleep.

"DON'T DIE!"

"M-Marle!" he said to himself in surprise after hearing a faint voice that seemed to come from the opposite wall. He then looked up and noticing Magus lowering his scythe from above his head.

In a state of panic, Crono managed to quickly raise his arm in Magus' direction. "Lightning!"

With that, Crono fired a small lightning bolt at Magus. Since Magus was caught off-guard, this fairly weak attack proved to be enough to make he leap back. unfortunately for Magus, the sudden move didn't protect him from the electricity; it only continued in Magus' direction and ended up shocking him in more way than one.

Unfortunately for Crono this time, Magus recovered from it quite quickly, and all that left Magus' mouth was a quick "Guh!" as he raised his arms in front of his head as if he thought it would protect him. "Ready for round two, I see," Magus commented.

Turning his head a bit to the right, Crono noticed his katana was a few meters behind Magus. "If only I could grab it," he thought.

"Looking for your sword?" Magus asked, causing Crono to lose his train of thought and jump up in surprise, "Well, too bad!"

Magus flew at Crono with his scythe out, but Crono managed to roll to the left, causing Magus to ram his weapon into the wall and get it stuck. Crono took this opportunity to run for his sword, but Magus noticed this and started trying to pull the scythe out with only his left hand. His right hand was aimed at Crono. Even from afar, Magus knew he could make an accurate shot with his next spell.

"Got it!" Crono exclaimed as he picked up the Rainbow.

"Behind you!" Marle yelled out to him as she saw a sharp shard of ice flying at him.

"W-What?" Crono said as he turned around before suddenly an icicle crashed against the wide part of his sword. The ice shattered as soon as it hit, and Crono wasn't quite sure what happened or how he was quite close to getting stabbed in the back with the icicle.

Meanwhile, Magus had managed to yank the scythe out and was flying quickly at Crono with it held out.

"Cyclone!" Crono shouted as he started spinning in place with his sword out, causing a vortex of wind to suddenly appear.

Suddenly, the vortex sucked Magus in, causing his speed turning against him. Crono had managed to knock the scythe out of his hands and make it fly into the air, landing a foot or to the side. Magus tried to escape by turning around and flying away from Crono's spinning sword, but Crono simply started spinning faster and faster.

Magus looked back at the sword as he was flying away. "Damn it! I can't get sucked in now!" he thought.

Magus tried flying away quickly, but Crono was slowly dragging him in. However, as soon as Magus was near, Crono tripped over his own feet and began falling face-first into the floor.

"Shit! I can't believe I made such a stupid mistake! I can't fall on my own weapon! I've gotta throw it away fast!" Crono thought as he threw his weapon to the side to prevent falling into it.

With that, Crono fell down onto the ground, hitting his nose hard enough to make blood start coming out along with his wrist which felt like it had just been cracked. Crono tried to get back up quickly, but he only managed to flip around so that he was looking straight up into the incredibly high ceiling of the colosseum. Everything was still spinning; he was in no state to get back up and get back to fighting Magus. He was far too dizzy.

Crono wasn't the only one with problems that resulted from his own actions, however. Magus was flying as fast as he could to get away, so once Crono tripped, Magus was sent charging torwards the wall at his top speed. Desperately trying to stop, Magus only managed to throw his arms in front of him.

"WHOA!" Magus screamed as he felt a tremendous force hitting his arms, followed with a smaller but still quite a painful amount of force to his face as he attempted to lean against the wall for a support.

Both of them were stunned for the moment. It all came down to who would recover first. Within a few seconds, Magus had managed to get up off the wall and dash towards the still dazed Crono lying on the floor. Once Magus got in front of Crono, he pointed his finger at him, clearly charging a shadow attack.

"Kill that fool!" a random man sitting a few seats in front of Ryaka demanded.

"Burn him to a crisp!"

"Make it slow!"

All Marle and Lucca could do was look ahead as Magus got ready to kill their husband and childhood friend. "Don't do it, Magus!" Lucca screamed as Marle stared ahead, mouth and eyes open wide in shock.

Schala watched as her brother got ready to kill the person she saved all those years ago. "This isn't fair. None of this is his fault!" she cried out, only to be completely ignored since the people cheering for blood were far too loud.

"CRONO!" Marle screamed at the top of her lungs.

Marle began to put her hands together in prayer style. Suddenly, Ryaka felt something touch his hair. "What the..." he said aloud before looking up.

Ryaka, Schala and the Clan of Cards all noticed snow seemed to be coming in.

"This doesn't make any sense, is there a leak in the roof or something?" King said aloud.

That was when Marle threw her arm out. "You- it's all _your _fault! Freeze frame!" she called as loudly as she could.

Suddenly, a large light-blue icy aura formed from above the heads of Ryaka and the Clan of Cards members, Schala being left out of it. The auras poured down on the enemies, and just like that, all of them were frozen.

The crowd looked back in disbelief for a moment.

"What just happened!?" asked a confused woman in the audience.

"Holy shit, we better leave before _we _get frozen!" the man sitting next to her shouted out.

With that, the crowd start screaming such lines as "Run for your lives," and with all the audience members sprinting for the exit, the ones arriving at the exit earliest attempting to kick the steel locked door down, Magus' attention was averted.

"What the hell is going on?" he said to himself.

Crono looked up as well. "What's everyone doing?"

That was when Magus turned and saw that Schala was in front of nothing more than a bunch of frozen enemies. "Schala! Hang on!"

After calling out to her, he flew over to her, passing by some of the audience members who were still trying to run away. "Janus!" she called out to him.

"Schala, hold on to me," he told her.

She complied and hung on to his back, her arms around his chest. As soon as he could tell she was ready, he jumped up and flew down to Crono, who had recovered from the dizziness. As soon as Crono got up, he knew the fight was over. "Take care of her for a second," Magus ordered him as he flew over to Marle and Lucca, picking up his scythe on the way.

Once he got to them, he sliced off their metal cuffs with his incredibly strong scythe. "Consider it my thanks for freezing those bastards. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some business with them."

After freeing the two, Magus flew back to Ryaka and the Clan of Cards's seats, landing when he was just in front of Ryaka. "I don't even know what you've done to my sister these past few years, but here is a fraction of what your punishment should be!" he declared as he began to charge his left hand's knuckles with every element once again.

"Elemental fist!" Magus called out, getting ready to shatter Ryaka's frozen form before, out of the blue, a powerful black aura appeared through Ryaka's ice and hit Magus, thus sending him flying back as his knuckles lost their magical auras.

"Ugh!" Magus let out as he flew back through the seats. Thankfully, he managed to get his flying ability to work before he hit the ground, preventing any injuries that would be caused via falling from the top of the building to the floor by backflipping while in mid-air, levitating in his current spot.

Magus looked ahead during his flight to see Ryaka had broken free from the ice Marle encased him in.

"That was cold. In more ways than one," he replied as King too managed to thaw himself out with a fiery aura appearing around his body.

Just like that, Ace, Jack and Queen were freed from their icy states by King's flames.

"Damn it Ryaka, why don't you fight us yourself, you coward!? You could at least send your thugs!" Magus yelled at him.

After Magus said that, a grin appeared on Ryaka's face. "Now that you mention it, that would be entertaining to watch. Besides, they haven't had very good practice with other opponents. Ace, Jack, Quen and King; you are to fight them," Ryaka ordered.

"Wait!" Crono yelled out over the crowd of people in the background, "At least unlock the door for the civilians first! They have nothing to do with this!"

Queen chuckled a bit and nodded her head. "Why of course. We wouldn't want them to get in the way of this fight."

Queen looked at the chaotic group of people trying to get through the door, trampling all over each other in the process. She then closed her eyes and focused on the group of people. Suddenly, a semi-transparent bright purple wave began spreading through the room, and just like that, the people were now walking back to their seats to watch another match.

"What kind of power was that!?" Crono called out.

"Isn't it obvious? She was using mind control on them!" Magus shouted to the man he just tried to kill a minute ago.

Queen laughed a bit. "Yes, and that was a mere taste of my power. Perhaps during our little battle royale, I can show you more."

**ooo**

Fritz had a weird feeling in his gut. He couldn't tell what was wrong, but he simply felt as though something wasn't right.

"Mr. Gaspar!" Fritz called to the guru as he walked over from the entrance to Spekkio's room to the old man in front of the light post.

"I told you this last time you were here. You can just call me Gaspar," he suggested to the knight, "Anyhow, what is it that you want?"

"I have this feeling. I just can't explain it, but I believe that my allies may be in danger!" Fritz told him.

"I see. So you wish to go after them, correct?" the guru guessed.

"Yeah, but the problem is that they took the Silverd with them. I remember the last time I came here, there was a room of portals. Could you maybe help me determine which portal to jump in?" Fritz asked.

Gaspar nodded his head. "Follow me," he said as he walked over to the room of portals, Fritz behind him the whole time.

There were nine portals arranged in the room. Gaspar started with the one at the bottom left. "I believe they were going to 11,997 BC. Let's look inside this portal," Gaspar said.

Gaspar and Fritz looked inside the portal, and saw a transparent image of an island with what seemed to be a palace at the north and colosseum all the way south. "I believe that is 11,997 BC," Gaspar told him, "Judging from the angle of this vision, I believe you will appear either on the roof of or inside the colosseum."

"Alright, I guess I'll go in this portal, then! Wish me luck, old man!" Fritz said as he jumped into the portal and disappeared.

**ooo**

The audience was eager for the next match. This one would be the challengers versus the Clan of Cards. Thanks to Queen's mind control, they had calmed down. They were no longer being controlled, but they did believe that there was nothing endangering them in any way, shape or form thanks to Queen's influence on their minds. Magus hated having to send Schala into one of the seats as she begged him to take her away from this awful place, but it was the only possible safe place in the building, so she was sent back there, much to her dismay. The only other place she could have been sent was the area Marle and Lucca were held up to prevent them from interfering in the fight, but with eight people on the battlegrounds instead of two, two of the opponents could easily end up there. This time, however, she was in the middle of the crowd, which wasn't much better but it certainly helped a bit.

There, all four of them were lined up horizontally, each opponent separated by a distance of two meters or so.

Crono was staring straight at King, though he couldn't make out the eyes because of the sunglasses. With the Rainbow in hand and fighting stance ready, Crono was prepared to face this gang's leader. Thanks to Marle's healing magic, he was back at his top physical state. The injuries Magus caused him were gone.

Likewise, a healed Magus was looking straight at Jack. This battle was more about revenge than anything else. Magus was planning on showing Jack that even with the ability of teleportation, he was by far the better fighter, and he would be able to win this time.

"I hope you're ready for this. You better give me a better fight than last time," Jack told the mage.

Marle would be facing Ace; Lucca was taking Queen and had told Marle to just trust her. Since Ace was the only one left, he would be Marle's opponent. With the Valkerye and Wonder Shot ready, Marle and Lucca had their weapons aimed at their opponents.

"FIGHT!" Ryaka shouted as loudly as he could.

With the signal given and the crowd cheering for blood, Crono immediately charged at King with his sword. Before Crono could slice King's head off, King ducked. There Crono was, leaning over the crouched man. King took this chance to charge his fist with flame and deliver an uppercut to Crono's stomach.

"Gu-uh!" Crono spat out as he got knocked into the air.

With Crono right above him, King quickly jumped up and brought his left fist down on Crono's chest. Crono didn't make any noise this time; he just coughed up a bit of blood and landed with his back to the floor. His sword dropped to the side in the process.

"I was hoping you'd be a better challenge," King taunted.

"Then allow me to fulfill your wish!" Crono shot back as he aimed his opened hand straight at King's towering body, "Lightning level two!"

A diagonal lighting bolt suddenly flew towards King from below, shocking him and making him step back.

"Not bad," King complemented as he shot out a wide wave of fire at Crono.

Thankfully, Crono had managed to roll forwards, passing through under the wave of fire. "Thunder uppercut!"

As he called out the name of his attack, he counterattacked the enemy with an uppercut to the chin with his lightning-charged left hand. King's head was knocked backwards, and he hopped backwards. Crono took this oppurtunity to run over to the left and grab the Rainbow. Holding it up, he looked King in the eye. His sunglasses were knocked off from the last hit, and Crono could see that he had bright red eyes. They were the color of his fire.

"Your techniques are interesting, but unfortunately for you, I'm literally just starting to get warmed up," King taunted at his red-haired opponent.

King spread his feet and bent his legs down a bit. "Guuuuuuuuh..." King let out as a bright and fiery aura appeared from underneath his body, finishing with a loud scream as stood up straight, the fiery aura expanding to cover his entire body.

"Get ready!" King called to Crono as he flew right at him.

At the same time, Magus was struggling once again against Jack.

"Take this!" Magus yelled at Jack as he punched in Jack's direction.

Jack teleported right behind Magus before the punch even connected. "Behind you."

Magus turned around with a roundhouse aimed at Jack's face, but Jack managed to teleport behind Magus yet again and Jack drop-kicked Magus, hitting him right on the back of his right knee.

"Gah! Take this you bastard!" Magus shouted while he shot a ball-shaped projectile of dark energy at the Clan of Cards member.

Instead of trying to teleport away, Jack jumped about four feet into the air as the sphere made its way towards him."Hmph, is that the best you can do?"

Landing on the floor, he grabbed Magus by the cape and held him up towards him. "Do you see now? You're so far under me tha-" Jack began before suddenly being jerked forward and landing right on Magus.

As Jack began falling down onto Magus, Magus gave him a quick headbutt, sending him in the opposite direction and onto the colosseum floor. "H-How did you..." Jack began to ask in surprise before realizing what happened, "Oh, I see. That ball of shadow magic. It was homing on me, wasn't it? Well I won't fall for that twice!" he yelled as he jumped back up again, staring Magus in the eye.

"Don't think I won't hesitate to hit a woman," Ace warned Marle as he stomped towards her.

"Don't worry, I won't!" Marle retorted.

As soon as she said that, she launched an arrow from the Valkerye, her crossbow, right at him. It only grazed his left cheek and a small cut appeared in it. Blood began to drip down.

"Ha, nice aim," he remarked as he began to charge at her.

Thankfully, he wasn't too fast, so Marle managed to jump to the side and avoid him. "I'm a little rusty with this, but I hope you'll enjoy this ice arrow!" Marle said to him.

Suddenly, the next arrow in her crossbow got frozen. "Icicle!" she called as she launched her new ammunition.

The icicle flew at Ace's forehead just as he turned around. "Shit!" he cried as he realized it would penetrate his brain if it hit.

He managed to leap back about two feet and cover his head with his hands so that the icicle only pierced his right hand. He merely pulled it out of his hand, causing a visible wound to appear, blood dripping out of the spot in his hand.

"So, I see you know how to use magic. Perhaps I shouldn't go too easy on you," he told her.

Out of nowhere, he suddenly dropped to the floor and began pounding on the flooring. "What the hell is he doing?" Marle wondered.

While he pounded on the floor over and over with his fists, a small tremor appeared out of the blue from underneath Marle. "What's going on!?" Marle said to nobody in particular as she began to lose her balance on the vibrating section of the ground.

Ace began to punch the floor faster and faster until Marle lost her balance and fell flat on her face with a thud, blood coming out of her nose as it hit the floor. With her on the floor, Ace slowly walked closer and closer to her. "Don't worry, I'll make this nice and fast," he told her as he continued to approach her.

"You! Why can't I control your mind, or even read it!?" Queen shouted out to Lucca.

Lucca just stood there laughing. "Heh, take a wild guess," Lucca remarked.

Queen stood still for a second. "I'm guessing it must have something to do with that helmet of yours."

Lucca nodded her head, still grinning widely. "That's right! I originally designed this helmet for myself to prevent any monsters from using their hypnosis spells on me, but it looks like you can't get past the barrier either!"

Queen bowed her head down. "You're right, I can't possess you."

"Ha! It looks like I win without putting any effort into this fight!" Lucca boasted as she continued to laugh, "Now surrender to the mighty Lucca, and I just may spare you!"

"Foolish girl, do you not realize that there are people here besides you?" Queen remarked.

Lucca's laughing suddenly stopped and she looked straight ahead into Queen's eyes. "You don't mean you're..."

A smile appeared on Queen's face. "I think one of your teammates might come in handy," she told Lucca as she extender her left arm, clearly getting ready to possess Magus who was nearby.

"NO!" Lucca yelled out as she quickly pulled out the Wonder Shot.

As soon as it was out, Lucca squeezed the trigger while it was aimed in her direction. Queen's eyes opened wide as she saw the unusual weapon, but she wasn't standing for much longer as a small plasma projectile flew at her, hitting her in the middle of the left arm and knocking her back. Burn marks were visible on her arm now, and she was holding onto the hurt spot with her right arm.

Lucca then spread her legs and aimed her gun at the Clan of Cards member. "Now get down on the ground kissing the floor, or you'll get burned again," Lucca demanded

Queen chuckled a bit. "Is that so?" she asked as a light blue aura with bright yellow sparkles suddenly covered her left arm.

Lucca stared at Queen intensely as her burn disappeared. "So you can heal yourself as well. It looks like I'll need to kill you instantly so you don't have a chance to do it again."

A vicious smile appeared on Queen's face. "Is that so? Well I'd think you have more to worry about at the moment than me."

"What are you..." Lucca began to respond before turning her head left to see Crono getting knocked back nearly to the wall with a charge punch by King while Ace towered over Marle. Magus and Jack were hitting each other with barrages of punches like Magus previously performed on Crono.

"They need help," Lucca thought, "I'll just run away from her for now."

As Lucca attempted to sprint towards her friends, Queen suddenly dashed right in front of her and sweep-kicked her off her feet, causing her to fall on her back. "Is that all it took to distract you? Pathetic."

Lucca started to shake. She could see that Marle was about to get stomped on by Ace. Thankfully, Lucca hadn't dropped the Wonder Shot, so she raised her right hand and was about to squeeze the trigger with it aimed at Queen, but Queen kicked it into the air and out of her hand. It landed behind Lucca's head, prompting Lucca to use her fire magic instead, but Queen quickly stomped on her foot.

"Ugh!" Lucca released as Queen's boot started crushing her hand.

"Say good nigh-" Queen told Lucca before there was a very loud and sudden crash coming from the ceiling.

Everyone looked up after hearing it. The audience was no longer cheering for blood; they were screaming in scared surprised. An orange-haired man with a full suit of silver armor covering everything except his head suddenly fell through the ceiling, screaming as he started shaking his body, afraid to fall to the ground.

"What the hell?" King stated as he diverted his attention along with his fellow Clan of Cards members and Crono's team.

The young man in the armor fell all the way from above the broken roof to the floor, landing right in front of Ace. A sword had fallen right next to him.

"What's going on he-" Queen said as she was suddenly pushed back and burned by a small pillar of fire.

Lucca quickly jumped up from off the floor, grabbing the Wonder Shot in the process as she started running in the direction of the person who had just shocked everyone by falling to the floor. Ace attempted to ram her out of the way with his shoulder, but she quickly shot his right foot with the Wonder Shot, thus making him fall down while grabbing it.

"FRITZ!" Lucca screamed, desperately hoping he was okay.

Lucca jumped towards him, falling to the floor on her knees. She grabbed him by the shoulders and called out to him. "Fritz, get up! Come on, don't die on me!"

Ace tried to take advantage of Lucca turning her back, but immediately he felt something pierce through his cape and shirt to stab his back. Pulling it out and holding it in front of him, he realized it was an icicle.

"I'm not finished yet!" Marle called to Ace.

In the meanwhile, Crono took advantage of King's distraction by charging at him. He attempted to ram him to the floor with his shoulder, but King managed to sidestep the blow and blast him with fire, sending Crono down on the ground screaming in agony from the burns. Crono rolled on the floor as fast as he could to get the flames off his back and ended up throwing his blue tunic aside. As King tried to bring his heel down on Crono's face, Crono rolled to the side, jumping back on his feet in time to perform a roundhouse kick with right foot that connected with King's hand about ninety degrees through.

Crono turned his head to the right and saw that King managed to grab his foot. "What shall I do with this? Burn it, perhaps? Break it? Rip it off?" King said, not really asking Crono so much as asking himself.

"None of the above!" Crono responded a small bolt of lightning shot out of his foot.

"GAAAAAH!" King screamed as it shot into his face.

Crono managed to turn around and see the stunned enemy. King was holding onto his face with his hands, hiding his eyes.

"Y-You took it out," King said to Crono in a calm voice.

Crono stepped a bit towards King. "Look, just surrender and you'll be spared. You're quite strong, King, and we could use someone li-"

King interrupted him in mid-sentence with a shouted statement. "YOU TOOK OUT MY EYE!"

King moved his hand down to show that his left eye socket was shut tightly and a trail of blood was leaking down. He had a bloody tear leaking down his face.

King's aura expanded as he screamed in frustration over his eye being taken out. Crono felt the heat rise since King was so close to him. Dashing backwards a good five meters, Crono began to focus on King. King had his hand pointed out and was clearly charging an attack to use against him.

Likewise, Crono raised his arms in the air, focusing on charging as much magical energy as possible. He would drain a significant chunk of his energy with his next attack, but it was his best shot.

Magus had shot another homing ball of dark energy at Jack. Jack quickly teleported right behind Magus and punched him straight in the back, sending him face-first into the floor. Before Magus could hit the ground, Jack grabbed him by the hair, keeping him up by his knees as the ball of energy came back at him. Just as it was about to hit Jack, he let go of Magus' hair and teleported behind him so that Magus would be on the receiving end of the attack. The dark energy hit Magus and knocked him backwards as he let out a grunt of pain, straight into Jack's arms.

Grabbing Magus from under the shoulders, he taunted him once again. "Haven't I already told you that I wouldn't fall for the same trick twice?"

Magus leaned his head forward, and then pushed it backwards at full force, thus heatbutting the front of Jack's head with the back of his.

"Ah! God damn it!" Jack yelled as he released his grip on Magus.

Magus turned and aimed his hand at Jack once again, a dark aura emanating from his open hand. Jack looked at him and laughed. "This ends now!" he declared as he walked slowly towards Magus.

"Shadow thorn!" Magus screamed the name of his attack.

Just like that, Magus shot out a very sharp but also very long blade of dark magic from his hand. However, instead of going for the now empty space in front of him, the shadow thorn flew out of the _back _of his right hand, causing a person behind him to let out a grunt of pain.

Magus turned his head to the left as far as he could to see Jack behind him. "You know what your problem is, Jack?" Magus asked his opponent, who now had a sharp blade stabbing through his heart. "You're far too predictable."

Jack just stood there for a short moment. "Beaten," he thought, "I've been beaten." He fell back through the tip of the magical attack, landing with his back facing the floor.

Jack's eyes were facing the ceiling. His teleportation ability failed to save him now. Blood simply wouldn't stop pouring out of his heart. At this point, he couldn't be saved. "Heh, heh, heh heh heh heh heh, heh." Jack let out with a smile on his face.

"What's so funny?" Magus asked his dying opponent.

"I'm dying. It looks like I'm finally dying. I wanted a worthy opponent, and nobody I met would dare challenge me thanks to my teleportation ability. But you... you managed to predict my movements. None of my other enemies were clever enough to do that. All this time, I've been regretting the fact I didn't fight you alone last we met. But now you've returned. Thank you," Jack told him while he lay there bleeding to death.

Those were his final words as he closed his eyes one last time.

Ace tried to cause another tremor, but Marle wouldn't give him the chance. She shot an arrow straight for his heart, but he managed to roll out of the way. "I can't afford to create any more icicles," Marle thought, "I'll run out of energy too quickly!"

Marle kept shooting arrows from the Valkerye, a few of them hitting Ace in the leg, hand or hair, but he kept dodging them by running around and rolling. Eventually when Marle reached into her quiver, she couldn't feel a single one.

"All out? Good, now it's my turn," Ace said to her as he bent down again.

"Fritz, don't leave me! Please, wake up!" Lucca cried as she continued to shake Fritz.

Tears were falling down her eyes as the worst possible scenario flashed through her head. "Don't die on me! Please say something!"

Suddenly, Fritz opened his eyes. "L-Lucca? What's going on here?"

After Fritz snapped back to consciousness, tears stopped falling from Lucca's face. She nearly smiled at him, but her feelings of relief were quickly replaced with frustration.

"Fritz, you jerk! Why did you do that!?" she shouted at him.

"W-What did I do?" he asked in fright.

"You went through the roof, you idiot! Didn't you realize the fall could have killed you!?" she shot back at him, "I was... I was worried for you!"

Fritz noticed the tears on her face and got upset by it; he couldn't stand to see her cry, even though it showed she really cared for him. "I'm sorry," he apologized.

Lucca nodded her head and wiped the tears from her face. "Then make it up to me! You're a knight of Guardia, so stand up and help us-"

Out of the blue, Lucca's helmet flew into the air and landed behind her. "I hate to interrupt your little reunion, but you didn't ask for a time out!" Queen told her.

Suddenly, Lucca's eyes went blank and a purple misty aura formed around her body. "W-What's going on here!?" Fritz said mostly to himself.

Queen had her hands focused on her head and her mind focused on Lucca's. "That was an interesting weapon you had. I'd like to see its effects myself, and you'll make a nice test subject," she said aloud.

Lucca walked towards the Wonder Shot. A confused Fritz stared as she bent down, picked it up and aimed it up at the right side of her head. With the gun pushing against the side of her head, pulling the trigger would cause a powerful projectile to blow her brains out of her head.

"Lucca! What are you doing!?" Fritz called out to his possessed friend.

Queen looked at Fritz and smirked as she moved her hands from her forehead to in front of her. On her left hand, all of her fingers were closed besides her pointer finger which served as an indirect trigger. On her right hand, all of her fingers were up and in Fritz's direction.

"It would seem that you're just a rookie, boy," she said to the knight.

Fritz was surprised by her accurate assumption. "What are you talking about!?"

"I don't need to read your mind to tell. I can see it in your eyes. However, for good measure allow me to read deeper into your thoughts," Queen told him.

Fritz began to stand up, still confused by the events unfolding in front of him. He heard the voice of Marle behind him, but before he could turn his head Queen had already trapped him in place with her telekinetic powers. "Pay attention to what's in front of you, kid!" she shouted to him.

After a few seconds consisting of her closing her eyes and focusing on his thoughts while Lucca had the Wonder Shot aimed straight for her head, Queen spoke again.

"Well, my assumptions have been pretty much confirmed. You've only been a guard for about seven months or so, haven't you? What's more, you've killed a few creatures like undead skeletons, but you don't really have the guts to kill a living, breathing person, now do you?"

Fritz couldn't believe it; she really had managed to read his mind. Letting go of her grip on Fritz, she opened the fingers on her right hand again. Just like that, Fritz was let go.

"Now, if you want to save your girlfriend here, you'll need to kill me. So what will it be?" Queen taunted.

Fritz couldn't quite come to accept the situation he was dealing with. It was such a serious situation, that Fritz didn't even give a damn about the fact he had just called Lucca his girlfriend. "No! I don't want either of you to die!"

Queen laughed once those words escaped Fritz's mouth. "How naive of you!" she said between laughter, "Do you seriously believe you can be both a so-called knight and a pacifist? Get those silly thoughts out of your head and prepare to either kill me or let her die!"

Fritz shook his head violently. "No! I refuse to kill someone!"

Queen suddenly clenched her right hand, causing Fritz's armor to start shaking. She then unclenched it, and it suddenly shattered into silver pieces on the floor. Fritz was left in only his regular clothing that he wore under his armor. "You fool! Do you realize how many creatures who were _practically _human that your partners killed? Oh, that's right; if you knew, I doubt you'd be here with them in the first place!"

Fritz stood there frozen in place for a moment before shaking his head once more. "No! It doesn't matter if they killed others; I know their means were justified and that it was all for the greater good! I just don't want blood on my hands!"

"Too bad! Either way, you _will _have blood on your hands, Fritz. Now make up your mind whose blood you want on your hands, and fast!" Queen shouted angrily at him.

"Stop it!" he yelled as he shook his head once more, his eyes shutting as tears started flowing down his face.

"Her blood it is!" Queen said to him.

"NO!" he yelled as he jumped over his broken armor and charged at Queen, picking up his sword in the process.

Queen was in such surprise, that she released her hold on Lucca to focus on Fritz with his steel saber. "No! I didn't think he'd actually have the guts to do this!" she thought to herself in panic.

Fritz closed his eyes and swung his blade to his left with as much force as possible. Once he opened his eyes, he saw dark red blood had covered his blade. In front of him was Queen, standing frozen as she looked down at her stomach. Fritz had sliced through much of her insides, and her arms did nothing to help as she tried to close the wound and heal it.

"My powers! Don't fail me now!" she desperately begged to herself.

She fell face-first onto the floor, her eyes wide open. While she lay in a pool of her own blood, Fritz looked straight at it. He completely ignored the massive amount of cheering that was going on in the background that rooted from the excitement to see blood. He just looked at the bloody mess he caused. Dropping to his knees, Fritz stared and stared at the corpse. This was his first true kill.

Lucca, while posessed, had still witnessed what happened but had no control over her actions. After seeing Queen die, normally she'd be celebrating, especially since she had almost been killed by said woman. However, this case was different; there was Fritz, freaking out after what just happened. As much as she wanted to comfort Fritz, now was not the time; she learned that the hard way just a few moments ago. She knew she had to help her friends. "Sorry Fritz," she said to herself, "I'll be back!"

With that, she ran over to help Marle defeat Ace.

King had finished charging his huge wave of fire, his ultimate attack. "HAAAAAA!" King shouted out as he shot it directly at Crono.

Crono hadn't managed to charge the luminaire like he had hoped, but his powerful lightning level two would have to work. "HAAAAAAAAH!" Crono shouted back as he shot a wave of lightning out of his hands in the same style.

About half-way through, the bright red wave and the bright yellow wave had met. King and Crono both tried to stay in place, focusing on their waves of magical energy. The power wasn't quite balanaced; slowly but surely, King's attack was overtaking Crono's. The fire just kept pushing nearer and nearer to Crono, who felt it get hot. As the fire continued to get as close as a meter away, Crono felt like he was already burning to death.

"No, I can't give up!" he loudly declared to himself.

"Well spoken, Crono!" a deep voice called to him from behind.

Suddenly, with the snap of a finger, another large wave of lightning had joined Crono's. The tables were now being turned with the extra person's lightning helping to get the yellow wave back to the middle. However, King shouted as loudly as he could again and put more energy into his fire, so the situation was repeating itself.

Crono turned his head a bit to the left. "Magus!" he cried.

"What are you waiting for!? Give this your all! If I'm the only one putting an effort into this, we'll be toast!" he responded.

Smiling, Crono turned his head back to his center. "Alright, let's do this. HAAAAAAAH!" Crono yelled at the top of his lungs.

With Crono putting all of his energy into the lightning wave along with Magus, it went through King's fire wave very quickly and ended up just a meter in front of him.

"No! I'm the king! This isn't right!" he shouted as he tried to overtake them again.

However, his efforts were in vain as the wave of lightning zapped right through him and roared against the wall. For about fifteen seconds, King was concealed within the lightning, until finally Crono and Magus rested their arms and stood up straight.

Looking ahead, Crono didn't see King's body. "Where'd he go?" he wondered aloud.

"See that black spot on the ground?" Magus asked his teammate who nodded in response, "That's what's left of him."

Crono was more than a bit disturbed by this, but his attention quickly focused as he turned around. "Marle!" he called out.

Ace had stomped against the floor with his right foot with tremendous force, making Marle start shaking in place. "Another tremor?" she thought, "Not good!"

Ace stomped once more, and a controlled tremor had appeared underneath Marle. Losing her balance, Marle fell to the floor on her back. "AAAAAH!" she let out as she hit the floor with a good amount of force.

Once she was down, Ace ran at her, charging his fist in the process. When he got right in front of her, he stopped, raised his left arm to the point his elbow went above his head, and began to bring it down. Marle managed to roll to her left, thus dodging his attack while feeling the shaking floor next to her as she moved. Quickly leaping to her feet, she attempted to dash away from him, but he quickly charged at her once more, grabbing left her fist in the process. She dropped her crossbow to the floor as he caught her.

"GUH!" Marle shouted in pain as she felt him squeeze her left hand.

Ace smiled menacingly at her. "Without your hands, you'll pose no threat to me."

"HIYAAAAH!" a familiar voice screamed.

Ace looked to his left in time to meet a fist meeting his face, falling to the floor in surprise. "Don't you ever think of laying a finger on her again!"

Although he attempted to caused another tremor by punching the floor, he felt a surge of plasma suddenly go through his body. He started shaking and fell all the way to the floor, slamming his forehead against it somehow hoping to stop the pain.

Lucca ran right over to the scene, still holding onto her gun. "This weapon's power is kind of random, but it looks like I got a fully-powered hit on him!" she proudly declared as she arrived.

As he recovered from the blow and tried to get up again, a certain dark mage flew straight at him. Holding him up by the fabric of his clothing located on the chest area, Magus looked Ace straight in the eye. Ace spit right on Magus, hitting the spade symbol engraved on his cheek. Feeling the saliva hit his face, Magus' expression went from neutral to angry. Letting go of Ace with his right hand, he quickly charged it with dark magic, thrust it back and then punched him square in the chest at full force.

"GRAAAAH!" Ace screamed as he fell backwards, the fabric on the middle of his chest tearing off into Magus' hand during the fall.

"That was for the last punch you gave me," Magus said to the fallen villain as he wiped the saliva off his cheek using his glove.

"You three take care of him, I'm going to grab Schala. While I'm at it, I'll make sure Ryaka learns a lesson!"

With that last line spoken, Magus flew upwards towards the seats, most of the spectators ducking as he came through.

Crono, Marle and Lucca looked at each other, proceeding to nod their heads. This signaled that they all had enough energy left for a triple technique.

Ace continued to look up, holding onto his chest with his right hand. The three of them shouted the name of their technique in unison.

"DELTA FORCE!"

The three of them formed a triangle around Ace and raised their hands into the air, charging up as much magical energy as they could. After a short moment, the three of them jumped into the air as a somewhat transparent triangle that went from the floor to the ceiling formed. One side of it was scorching with flame, another freezing with ice, and the last side sparkling with electricity.

Since Magus had already flown to Schala, picked her up and flew her over to Fritz's direction whilst carrying her, the crowd looked back up. Every last one of them went silent, staring in awe at the amazing power. Even Ryaka was smirking. "Their power is not bad," he thought.

As the three of them fell to the ground, sparks, ice shards and small flames shot out of the pyramid-esque magical attack. It reached its peak causing the whole room to flash white. Everyone closed their eyes as it suddenly got extremely bright, and as the light faded away, everyone managed to open them again. There was nothing left of Ace.

The three teammates slumped down, breathing heavily. That attack had taken up the rest of their energy. Lucca instantly recalled that she had left someone alone. "Fritz!" she called as she ran towards him.

Lucca stopped in her tracks as she got right next to him. "Fritz?"

He was still looking down at the floor, his eyes closed shut. Tears were coming out of his eyes. Schala was sitting down on her knees next to him, also looking down and crying. They were both shaking.

Crono and Marle had run over there as well. Noticing that Lucca was already there to comfort Fritz, they walked past the two of them, spotting Queen's corpse on the way. Crono stopped in front of Schala and crouched down.

"Hey Schala. We're here to res-" Crono tried to inform her, reaching for her arm so that she could rest it on his shoulder and he could help her walk to the exit.

However, as he reached for her, she knocked his arm away with her own. "No... get away!" she cried, backing up from him.

Crono got up and walked towards her. "Schala, it's okay! It's me, Crono. I met you back at-" he tried to say again while reaching for her hand so he could help her up.

"Please, leave me alone," she said under her breath as she scooted back a bit from him, her eyes closed.

Crono stopped in his tracks. He figured something was wrong, but couldn't quite tell what it was.

_CRASH!_

Suddenly, everyone save for Fritz and Schala shot their heads up towards the wall in the middle of the colosseum's height located above the steel door. There was Magus, forced against the wall.

The audience managed to see what happened while the heroes were distracted. Magus had flown at Ryaka once again and tried to stab him with the scythe, but Ryaka managed to stop him in mid-air. "What the hell?" Magus thought, "This is just like Queen's telekinesis!"

Once he finished that thought, he was suddenly thrust towards the wall, crashing against it.

As Magus began his descent to the floor, Crono ran straight for him, catching Magus as he fell. Laying Magus on the floor, he checked for a pulse.

"Good," he said to himself, "It's still there."

"Marle!" he called for his wife, "Do you think you could use one more healing sp-"

Magus suddenly pushed Crono away from his side, getting up right afterwards. "That won't be necessary, I'm fine."

Out of nowhere, Ryaka flew right behind Crono and knocked him down on his knees by bringing his elbow down on Crono's left shoulder.

"You four have proved to be more powerful than I thought. I'll even need to awaken my old guardians because of you," Ryaka told them.

Out of the blue, the steel door was opened; Ryaka obviously used his telekinesis, but he wasn't done yet.

With his telekinetic powers, he grabbed Crono, Marle, Lucca Magus and Fritz, lined them up in front of the exit and forced them out into the snow.

Beore he shut the door on them, he taunted them. "Magus, I believe it was, if you had only killed your teammate like I ordered you to, the worse I would have given your sister was a quick and painless death. But now, you've angered me. I will unleash all I can on her for your insolence. Don't even think of breaking down the steel door, because my force field will be up until I'm finished."

"NO!" Magus yelled in response as he flew towards the door.

However, a shiny blue force field suddenly surrounded the colosseum, electrocuting Magus and sending him backwards on his feet

"A force field!?" Crono commented as the steel door slammed shut.

"We need to break through it!" Lucca shouted as she aimed her Wonder Shot at it.

She shot it, but there was no effect; the shot simply disappeared once it came into contact.

Crono attempted to throw his sword at it, but the sword just fell to the floor once it hit the force field as if it just made contact with a wall.

Magus was simply staring right at it. "Damn it! How are we going to get through!?" Marle shouted.

Magus suddenly fell to his knees, grabbing his head with his hands as he shook it, grunting in pain as he did so.

"Magus, what's going on!?" Crono asked him in a worried tone.

After a few seconds, Magus let go of his head and ceased all noise. Standing back up, he turned around. Ignoring their questions, he spoke.

"Do you still trust me?" Magus asked all four of them.

Lucca was looking down, Fritz didn't have a response, and Marle was looking at him angrily, shaking her fist in his direction. "You tried to kill Crono, I can't forgive you for that! I wouldn't have healed you before the battle if Crono didn't tell me to!"

Crono shook his head. "No, Marle; it's alright. If we didn't fight, Ryaka would have killed Schala right then and there. I would have done the same if I were him."

"Very well. Then you'll need to trust me once again," Magus informed them.

Crono nodded back. "It's not like we have any other choice. What is it?"

"Just hurry to the Silverd and travel to the end of time!" Magus ordered them, "I'll explain everything once we meet up with the guru!"

**ooo**

_What does Magus have to tell the team? Will they be able to defeat Ryaka and save Schala?_

_To be continued..._

**ooo**

**Author's note: Well, there was my action-packed chapter for you. What did you think of the fight scenes? Reviews appreciated!**

**Also, I think I'll do a Q & A segment next chapter for the questions I've been asked, so yeah. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.**


	8. Masamune of Darkness

**Author's note: Well this took a while. Sorry about that, I guess I have some explaining to do.**

**Alright, let me begin by saying I pretty much finished this chapter at around the beginning of February but, well, I HATED the result. I've just spent a while rewriting every single bit and piece of the chapter because it was just full of forced dialogue, ass pulls (Crono going from lightning level two to luminaire level two just because he saw Marle getting pushed back? Yeah, not exactly my best work), etc.**

**I understand many of you may be upset with me taking so long, but really I'm in this for the art, and I simply couldn't submit this if I didn't feel somewhat satisfied. Hopefully this chapter will be worth the wait.**

**Anyhow, I was planning on doing a short Q & A at first, but then I noticed that I already answered, like, every question I was asked via PM. Oh well, Let's move on to the story, starting with a flashback on a character that always seemed to be perfect fanfiction fuel, but nobody has really written about.**

**Now that everything's out of the way, let's begin.**

_**ooo**_

_**585 AD**_

_"Sir Magus, we found the King's brat wandering around the Magic Cave, saying he was going to take us evil monsters out all by himself," Ozzie informed the fiendlord, laughing as soon as he finished the sentence._

_The room was quite dark, being lit with nothing other than a bunch of blue flames to the side of Magus' brown wooden throne. The nineteen year old fiendlord himself sat on the throne._

_Magus, upon hearing Ozzie's news, was also quite amused. "So you've kidnapped Prince Guardia, have you? Bring him in, I could have some fun with him."_

_"Yes my lord."_

_With that, Ozzie exited through the door, allowing Slash to step through with a young boy around the age of fourteen with a red and yellow crown, blue jewels embroidered in the middle of the front and top. The boy was very overweight as well; in fact, he could give Ozzie a run for his money, and he rounded out to about a meter and a half in height. He was dressed in a dark purple robe that went down to his feet, barely exposing his dark brown boots. He also wore a bright red cape that went from his neck to his feet, barely hovering above the ground. He was part of Guardia's royal family, no doubt about it._

_With his hands tied together thanks to some rope, Flea walked the prince over to Magus' throne before leaving. Prince Guardia was left mere feet in front of Magus, anger and determination in his eyes._

_"You dirty coward, untie this rope and fight me like a man!" the prince loudly demanded._

_Magus simply smiled at the prince; he was clearly amused. "If an ant told you to fight it face-to-face fairly, would you humor it?"_

_"What the hell does that have to do with anything, you cheating coward!?" the prince shot back._

_"It would seem that you're not the sharpest tool in the shed. Tell me boy, why did you come here?" Magus inquired._

_"Why should I tell a fiend like you?"_

_Magus smirked as Prince Guardia spoke the last line. "How about this; answer all my questions, and I'll fight you one-on-one, no magic or anything."_

_"Alright then," he replied, still standing in front of the dark mage, "I overheard my dad and a few others talking about how you and your servants are becoming a serious threat. You even sent troops to burn down Guardia and take all the supplies they could carry, but they were no match for the Guardian military! Since I'm so strong, it's only fitting that I should be the one to take down the stupid evil Magus!"_

_Magus had been suppressing his laughter at the end, but after a second of silence, he burst into laughter, leaving the prince baffled._

_"What's so funny!?" he yelled at Magus, "You should be taking me seriously, after all I have the Hero's Medal!"_

_._

_With that, Magus exploded into even more laughter, struggling to breathe. After a few seconds, Magus managed to sit straight again and keep his face staight._

_"I get it now, your strategy was to make me laugh myself to death. Although I had trouble breathing after hearing your nonsense, your plan failed," Magus taunted him._

_"Stop mocking me and fIght like a man so that I can show you some pain!" he demanded once again._

_"Alright son," Magus agreed as he stood up and took the scythe that was leaning against the back of his throne, "Show me."_

_Approaching the young and obese prince, Magus quickly slashed through the rope that was binding his hands together. Within an instant, Magus had thrown the scythe back and the prince fell backwards on the floor in surprise. _

_"The fight hasn't even begun and already you've been knocked down," Magus told him with a smile on his face, "I was hoping for a fight that was worth my time."_

_Hearing Magus insult him, he was refueled as he got himself up from the floor and charged at his opponent. Unfortunately for the prince, he was far too slow, so as soon as he got within an inch of Magus, Magus merely sidestepped the punch the prince failed to deliver with his right hand._

_Upon being kicked on the back of his right knee, Prince Guardia fell to the floor on his knees screaming whilst Magus stood right behind him._

_"Is this the best you can do?" Magus taunted him, "At first I thought you were brave, but now it seems more like you're far too stupid to realize what you're in for."_

_"SHUT UP!" he shot back at Magus as he attempted to hit the fiendlord with his elbow. _

_Magus merely jumped back to avoid his elbow and proceeded to deliver a flying kick to the Prince's back at full force._

_With that, he was knocked a few inches forward, falling on his face with a thud as he screamed in pain. Magus assaulted him once more with a low kick to the side of his stomach that proved to be powerful enough to flip him over as he was launched into the air for a split-second, crying out in pain once more. There Prince Guardia lay on his back as Magus stood right in front of him._

_Magus grinned, showing his fangs to the frightened prince. "What's the matter? You were so brave and confident a minute ago, what happened?"_

"P-Please don't kill me! I'm sorry!" he begged, tears starting to appear in his eyes.

_"You want me to spare you? You can't possibly be serious," Magus responded, visibly getting angrier, "You should have thought about that before you challenged me."  
_

_"I'll do anything! Just let me live!" he continued to plead._

_In order to silence him, Magus zapped Prince Guardia with a bolt of lightning, leaving him screaming in agony for a few more seconds. _

_"You make me sick. You remind me so much of when I was younger. You were born into privilege, and so you think you're above everybody else. Too bad for you that isn't how it works. Simply having the Hero's Medal won't do anything for you, you need to know how to use it!"_

_The scared prince simply lay there in shock, staring straight into Magus' crimson red eyes. "For the longest time, I was angry. I was angry about how one minute I was the prince of the most powerful kingdom on the planet, and the next I was thrust into this place. However, now I realize it was all for the better. If it weren't for the fact I lost everything, I wouldn't have been so motivated to get it back, I wouldn't have trained to become as powerful as I am now. Thankfully for me, Ozzie saw more in me than an angry child who happened to have minor magical abilities. Thanks to that fool, I managed to become powerful enough to surpass not only him, but every other person on this planet in power. In the end, I'm a much better ruler here than I ever would have been if I had been sheltered my whole life and had everything handed to me."_

_Still overcome with terror, the boy on the floor managed to utter out "What's the point to this?"_

_"The point," Magus began, "Is that had I continued down the road I was on as a child, then I probably would have ended up the same way as you. Take a look at yourself, you're not fit to rule over an ant hill."_

_"A-Are you going to..." he tried to let out before Magus stopped him._

_"I'm not going to kill you," Magus assured him._

_"T-Thank you so much! I'm so-" he attempted to say before being cut off in mid-sentence._

_"But I'm not letting you off easy."_

"W-What do you mean!?" he asked.

_"I just learned a new spell, and I've been dying to use it," Magus began, "It's a spell that turns a person into a frog, and the only way to reverse the spell is to kill me."_

_"No! Please, don't do it! You don't have to change me into-" Prince Guardia tried to convince Magus as his finger was pointed straight at his chest._

_"SILENCE! You don't deserve the riches in life you have now, it's time you experience what I went through, it's time you have your life taken away from you and be forced to start over!"_

_"NOOOOOOOOOO!"_

_**ooo**_

_"Mom, dad, it's me, gribbit!" Prince Guardia called out to his parents as he burst through the castle's front door. King Guardia and Queen Leene standing right in front of it since they were on their way to leave the castle._

_"G-G-G-GUARDS! HELP US!" King Guardia mumbled in fear as he and the queen stepped back._

_Seeing them try to escape from him and enter the throne room, Prince Guardia slowly walked towards them. "Mom, dad, it's okay! I'm still your son! Please, you have to believe me, gribbit!"  
_

_The throne room's door was slammed open as about half a dozen guards ran through. All of them were too frozen in fear to attack the monster. "W-What is that!?" several of them said in unison._

_"Look, I still have my crown! And the Hero's Medal, gribbit! It's me, I'm your son, gribbit!" he desperately tried to convince them._

_"Honey, he... he has our son's belongings! He even has the voice!" King Guardia said to her, not believing his eyes._

_There stood an extremely large frog that weighed hundreds of pounds and towered over everyone else due to his height._

_"M-Magus did this!" the king stated quickly, "It's a trap! He killed our son and stole his belongings! He even put his voice in that beast!"_

_"D-Dad, you're wrong, gribbit! Please belie-" the giant frog tried to say before the knight Cyrus rushed in from the frog's left and knocked him a good meter or so to the right with his shoulder._

_"Stop! I'm your son, gribbit!"_

_"Don't listen to him!" Cyrus told the king, queen and his fellow knights, "This is clearly an illusion of that fiend Magus!"_

_With that, Cyrus rushed at him again, but Prince Guardia managed to jump over him in desperation so that he was once again in front of the door. "After him, damn it!" Cyrus yelled at his fellow knights._

_"R-Right!" they all replied as they ran straight forward to attack the monster._

_Realizing that he would have to leave now if he wanted to live, Prince Guardia dashed through the door, leaving a giant hole in it. He was crying his eyes out, but he managed to keep hopping away into Guardia Forest so that the knights wouldn't catch him. Eventually, however, Cyrus managed to catch up with it and stab him in the back, missing any internal organs thankfully for the frog._

_The stab to the back left the former prince bleeding from it, screaming in agony and even more desperate to escape from the forest. Quickly, he jumped once again, this time landing several meters in front of Cyrus. Cyrus tried to rush him, but Prince Guardia managed to jump out of the way even further this time, landing right outside of the forest._

_By the time Cyrus made it through the trees and bushes, there wasn't a frog in sight. The other knights managed to catch up to Cyrus within the minute, and already Cyrus was thinking of a plan._

_"Alright, the frog could be hiding anywhere, but he won't make it very far considering I left a pretty good wound on him," Cyrus informed them, "So I want you to start searching different areas for him. He has the Hero's Medal, after all. I'll go back to the castle and recruit as many people as I can to help with the search."_

_"My king, my queen, I'm sorry for your loss." Cyrus sincerely thought to himself (despite not being Prince Guardia's biggest fan) as he turned to leave his fellow knights behind and head for the castle._

_**ooo**_

_Against all odds, Prince Guardia had made it all the way to the Cursed Woods. However, he collapsed soon after entering it, lying on his stomach while he bled to death. Miraculously, he was quickly found by a group of six wandering t'poles._

_"Check it out, there's a giant frog," one of them pointed out._

_"And he even has a crown," another stated, "Does that mean he's a king of frogs, gribbit?"_

_"If we want to find out," the eldest one began, "We'll need to heal him first. He might even be dead already, gribbit."_

_"You're right, he's bleeding! Come on guys, we can use our slurp abilities to heal him, gribbit!"_

_With that, all six of the t'poles began to use their tongues on the wound on his back, licking away all the blood and closing the wound. That was when he regained consciousness._

_"W-What's going on here, gribbit?" he nervously asked as he opened his eyes to see six red t'poles._

_"Yay! You're alright, gribbit!" one of the t'poles exclaimed, "We thought you were going to die from that nasty cut on your back, gribbit!"_

_Instantly after hearing that, the giant frog clearly remembered the latest events in his life. "A stab wound, huh?" he thought, "So I wasn't dreaming and... hey, I'm still a frog, gribbit!"_

_With that, he burst into tears, crying as loudly as he could in front of the t'poles._

_"H-Hey, what's wrong, gribbit?" the eldest one asked._

_Between tears, he managed to let out "I, I used to be a prince, but now, now my, my own family wants me dead, gribbit!"_

_He began to cry even harder as he said the last line. In an attempt to comfort him, one of the t'poles offered "It's alright, you can be our king, gribbit!"_

_After a while, he calmed down in front of the silent frogs. "So, you said I could be your king? Do you mean it, gribbit?" he asked, hoping to make the most of this situation._

_"Yeah," several of them said in unison._

_"What would we call you though, gribbit?" the youngest one asked._

_The new king thought for a moment before giving his answer. "Just Frog King will do, gribbit."_

_**ooo**_

_**589 AD**_

_Over the next four years, the frog king ruled over the Cursed Woods, even making a sign that read "Private property. No trespassing... GRIBBIT!"_

_His rule extended beyond just t'poles. Many gnawlers, naga-ettes and even some nus began to consider him their king, not only because he was a very large and powerful creature, but also because, by their standards, he was very intelligent considering that he knew how to read and write._

_The Frog King was not satisfied with his power over the creatures of the Cursed Woods. Although he pretended that he cared for his loyal subjects, in reality he was using them to build up an army so that he could take Guardia Castle back from his parents. All these years later, he was still furious at his parents for turning their back on him simply because he had been changed into a frog. He was angry at Cyrus for stabbing him in the back- literally. Most of all, he held a great deal of hatred for Magus since he turned him into a frog. Once he was finished with Guardia Castle, he would have his revenge on Magus as well. He would have his soldiers bring Magus back to him so he could finish the mage off. He would get back at Magus if it was the last thing he did._

_For now, however, he had to build up a bigger army._

_**ooo**_

_**590 AD**_

_"Cyrus, are you leaving?" Queen Leene asked him from the throne._

_There he stood in the middle of the throne room wearing shiny metal armor with gold outlines and a bright purple cape, standing on on the dark purple carpet. "Yes, it's time we took back the Medal from the Frog King. And I'd like to see that mythical sword for myself," He answered._

_Reports of the Frog King returning had spread all over the area after a young blonde-haired girl named Fiona had been kidnapped from her home by a group of naga-ettes. A message had been left on the table reading "I, Frog King, shall knock you all down." A witness had seen the naga-ettes bring her into the Cursed Woods._

_"But Cyrus, the kingdom needs you!" King Guardia exclaimed, "Furthermore, Leene and I need you. You must return to us!"_

_"Do not worry, as long as there is life in these bones, I shall return!" Cyrus assured them._

_With that, he bowed to them one last time and turned around, already headed for the Cursed Woods. Immediately after stepping through the first door, he was greeted by ten soldiers in purple armor. "Sir Cyrus!" One of them called out._

_All of them bowed to him as he prepared to leave. "We, the Knights of the Square Table, wish you a safe journey," the one directly in front of him said._

_Cyrus gave them a smile before proceeding forward. "Listen well, my friends," he told them, "I now entrust the safety of the kingdom to you!"_

_After the soldier in front of him stepped to his right so that Cyrus could proceed, Cyrus walked down the stairs to meet Glenn._

_"Pardon the delay," he said to his green-haired friend, "Shall we be off?"_

_**ooo**_

_The Frog King stood in front of the tied-up girl he had kidnapped the night before. She was tied up with rope around her feet and hands, a couple of naga-ettes standing beside her to ensure that she couldn't escape. A large group of monsters was gathered around him, with two green t'poles by either of his sides. _

_"This, my loyal subjects," the Frog King began his speech, "Is a human girl, gribbit. The knights of Guardia will be sent in several different locations to look for her, which shall make the castle much more vulnerable and easy for you to invade, gribbit. In a matter of hours, we shall attack, gribbit!"_

_As soon as he said the last line, dozens of creatures began to cheer._

_"YEAH!"_

_"ALL HAIL THE FROG KING!"_

_Within seconds however, the area went silent as a red t'pole ran over to the king screaming "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK! AN ARMORED MAN IS HEADED OUR WAY, GRIBBIT!"_

_"What!?" the Frog King shouted in panic, "How did he know I was here? N-Nevermind that, after him, gribbit!"_

_"Yes sire!" several of them responded as they rushed over to find the man in armor._

_The Frog King remained in a few meters in front of a tied-up Fiona as all of his troops (Save for two green t'poles by his side and the two naga-ettes guarding Fiona) ran over to fight the intruder._

_He expected to hear a human screaming and all noise to stop within seconds, but instead the Frog King heard nothing but the screaming of his troops. Minutes passed by, and the noise continued, which worried the Frog King. Either the knight was still alive and managed to single-handedly kill most of the monsters at this point, or they had gotten into a fight over who would eat his corpse and were killing each other over it. _

_Although the knight didn't know the Frog King's exact location, he almost certainly figured it out as soon as Fiona shouted in a high-pitched voice "HELP ME! I'M OVER HERE!"_

_"D-Damn it! Shut her up, gribbit!" the Frog King ordered._

_However, it was too late as a man in shiny metal armor dashed through a tall bush, ending up in the middle of the area. To his left was the Frog King alongside two t'poles. To his right were two naga-ettes and a blonde-haired girl._

_"So, I take it this is the girl that was kidnapped last night," he greeted them, "I could've sworn that I killed you last time, but it looks like you truly did survive our last encounter."_

_Upon hearing Cyrus speak, the giant amphibian recognized him. "So it seems that you are the one who stabbed me in the back in more ways than one, gribbit."_

_Cyrus was confused by that last statement. "More ways than one? What are you talking about?"_

_"Don't play dumb with me, gribbit! I was the prince, and you still decided to attack me, gribbit!"_

_"You are clearly out of your mind if you are still going on about that bullshit," Cyrus shot back, "I am not stupid, I did not fall for that nonsense five years ago, and I won't fall for it now! The king and queen are still mourning over his almost certain demise at the hands of Magus, and when you pretend to be him it only makes me angrier!"_

_"Fine, don't believe me. Though I would like you to tell me how you got through my troops, gribbit!" the Frog King demanded._

_"Your troops were pathetic. I could have taken them with one hand behind my back," Cyrus replied, "Now hand over the girl."_

_"L-Liar!" the Frog King yelled back, unable to believe what he had just heard, "I spent years building up that army, there's no way you could have taken them so easily, especially not alone, gribbit! You're just one knight!"_

_"That's beside the point," Cyrus shot back, "Now release the girl or I'll have no choice but to finish the job I started five years ago."_

_Hearing Cyrus mention the girl, the Frog King realized he still had one last card._

_"That's right, I have a hostage, don't I?" he said to Cyrus, who retained a straight face, "Listen here, either you drop your sword and kiss the ground, or we kill the girl, gribbit."  
_

_Cyrus merely smirked as the Frog King said the last part. "Remember how you asked how your army could fall against one simple knight?" Cyrus said._

_"What's your point, gribbit?" the Frog King inquired._

_"Your army is only half as pathetic as you thought."_

_"What do you mean by that?"_

_Cyrus took a deep breath. "Glenn, NOW!"_

_Suddenly, the naga-ette to Fiona's left was kicked forward, falling face first to the ground in front of Cyrus, allowing him to finish it off with a stab to the throat. The other one was stabbed through the heart and shoved to the right._

_"What the hell!?" the Frog King exclaimed._

_"Now that your hostage is safe, it looks like you'll need to hand us the Hero's Medal," Cyrus told him as Glenn walked forward to untie the ropes that Fiona was bound with._

_The Frog King wasn't about to hand over the medal; in fact, he was prepared to fight Cyrus to the death. This was the man responsible for stabbing him, and thinking about taking Cyrus down himself made the Frog King realize that he should have just fought Cyrus in the first place rather than having his minions do the dirty work._

_"So, you want the Hero's Medal, dear knight of the kingdom?" he began, "Well come and take it, if you can, gribbit!"_

_Cyrus, of course, wasn't intimidated. "Prepare yourself, pollywog! En guarde!"_

_"Nirvana strike!"_

_Within a single second, Cyrus had dashed over to the Frog King, sliced a few inches into his stomach and leapt back._

_"GRAAAACK!" the Frog King screamed in agony as he quickly reached for his wound and covered it with his hands._

_"How dare you pick on a helpless amphibian!" he exclaimed, "Filthy medal! I won't forget this!"_

_With that, the Frog King threw the Hero's Medal at Cyrus, landing on the grassy ground right in front of him. The Frog King then ran to his right, the green t'poles follwing close behind._

_Cyrus dropped down to pick up the medal. At long last, it was recovered._

**ooo**

**The end of time**

Six dark mahogany chairs were set around Gaspar's table of the same type of wood. Crono, Marle, Lucca, Magus, Fritz and Gaspar sat on the chairs, with Magus speaking while the others listened.

"When I looked up at the force field after being knocked back by it," Magus began, "The first thing I noticed was an oddly familiar symbol in the middle. Looking closely, I realized just what that symbol was. Lucca, hand me some paper and a pen."

Lucca complied, taking a miniature notepad with a black cover as well as a pen with blue ink out of her pocket. Magus grabbed the notepad and pen as Lucca handed them to him and opened up the notepad to the middle, finding a clean page. Magus began to draw something with the pen. "What could be so significant about a symbol?" Lucca wondered.

Within a few seconds, Magus had finished drawing a symbol and held out the notepad in front of him so everybody could see what the symbol looked like.

§

All of them looked at it for a moment, but nobody recognized it. "What is that supposed to be?" Marle asked.

Magus visibly got a bit frustrated, his expression becoming slightly angry. "Are you sure you don't recognize this?"

"Hm," Lucca said, "I know I've seen that somewhere, but I can't quite remember where."

Magus sighed. "Do any of you remember what the Masamune's handle looked like?"

With that, everyone (Besides Fritz of course) recalled why that symbol was familiar. "That's the symbol on the handle of either side of Glenn's Masamune!" Crono said more to himself than anybody else as he remembered what the Masamune's handle looked like. It was no wonder they didn't recognize it at first; several years had passed, and it wasn't like they saw that part of the Masamune often since Glenn would always be covering it with his hand.

"That's correct," Magus replied, "And that's not the only place it appears."

With absolutely no warning, Magus stood up from his chair and pulled up his shirt, thus exposing a mark on his bare chest.

§

Crono, Marle and Lucca stared in awe as they realized that Magus had the same sign on his chest as the Masamune. "We all know that I'm naturally weak against the Masamune," Magus told them, "After all, it was originally the Ruby Knife, which Melchior created to destroy the Mammon Machine. I was born with a large amount magical power, and I thought that if Schala and the gurus were capable of extracting energy from the Mammon Machine, then I was too. I ended up sneaking to the Mammon Machine, hoping to extract energy from it and absorb its power. It worked. I secretly used the Mammon Machine to enhance my magical abilities rather than training to increase my power, and I thought that I was getting all that magical power for free. However, it ultimately came with an unforeseen consequence; I got this mark as a result of using it. You could say that it's a symbol of my weakness against the Dream Stone's power; after all, the Ruby Knife was made using the Dream Stone."

Lucca nodded. "I think I see what you're getting at here. So, since the mark on the force field was the same mark on you and the Masamune, that would mean..."

"That's right. If my theory is correct, then we could get Glenn to use the Masamune and penetrate the force field so that we can rescue Schala," Magus replied.

Crono and Marle's face tensed up. "That could probably work," Crono replied, "But there's just one problem."

"I know," Magus told Crono, "That bastard is no longer on our side. Regardless, we don't have any other leads, and finding Glenn would be our best bet."

"I suppose this means your next stop is 603 AD," Gaspar guessed.

Crono nodded, a determined look on his face. "Yeah, and while we're there we might just be able to save Ashley."

"Wait just a minute here," Lucca pointed out, "If we spend time in 603 AD, the same amount of time will pass by in 11,997 BC. The longer we stay, the longer Schala is left with that creep. What are we going to do about this?"

"I know that," Magus said as he looked down, grunting after he spoke, "But what can we do besides hurry?"

"Actually," Gaspar interjected, "I believe that Spekkio could help you out."

**ooo**

"Since I _am _the master of war, I _could _freeze time for you in one particular area," Spekkio informed Crono, Marle and Magus, "However, first I would like something from you."

"And what would that be?" Crono wanted to know.

"Well," Spekkio began to tell them as they wondered just what Spekkio wanted, "I was wondering if you could play a game with me. After all, it does get boring in here."

Upon hearing this, Magus got frustrated and furrowed his eyebrows as he spoke. "A game? My sister is in trouble and you want us to participate in a _game!?_"

"Just calm down Magus, we have all the time in the world while we're here," Crono reminded him.

Magus sighed as Marle questioned Spekkio. "So what kind of game is this?"

"Since you obviously can't best me in battle, I'd like to see how well you can do in a game of wits," Spekkio explained, "Here are the rules; I can ask you one-hundred easy questions, or just one hard question."

Before Crono or Marle could consider his offer, Magus picked the latter choice. "Just give me the difficult one."

"Alright," Spekkio said to him, "Which came first; the kilwala or the egg?"

"The egg," Magus quickly answered.

"How can you be so sure?" Spekkio demanded out of curiosity.

Magus smirked before speaking once again. "I agreed to _one _question, and I have already answered it."

Spekkio stood in silence for a few seconds, causing Crono and Marle to wonder if Magus had pissed him off enough to make him take back his offer to help them. However, they were relieved to see that after a few seconds he was smiling back. "I guess you're right. Very well, I shall assist you."

With that, Spekkio closed his hands together in praying formation and closed his eyes, whispering words in a language none of them could understand. Once he separated his hands and opened his eyes, he informed the team about what had just happened.

"There you go, thanks to my spell the era of your choice has been frozen until you step foot in it. Though I must warn you, if you spend more than three days in a different time period the spell will wear off. If you, for instance, spend twenty-four hours in a time period besides 12000 BC, then once you go to 12000 BC time will be frozen in all others eras until those twenty-four hours have passed in 12000 BC. Once those have passed, time will resume normally, so spending a day in that period will cause a day to pass in all others," Spekkio explained, "Do you understand?"

All three of them nodded to show that they did indeed understand.

"Thank you Spekkio," Crono said.

"You truly are the master of war," Marle complemented, managing to put a smile on his face due to how proud he was to have somebody else call him by that title.

"By the way Spekkio," said Magus as he looked the master of war straight in the eye, "Do you know how I'm sure that the egg came first?"

"Please, do tell me, I would love to hear your logic," Spekkio replied.

Magus smirked before answering his previous question. "I ate the egg for breakfast, and the kilwala for dinner."

Suddenly, all three of the people around Magus burst into uncontrollable laughter for a few seconds, but to Magus it felt like at least a minute or two since he didn't get what was so funny.

"Jeez Magus, we needed a laugh, thanks," Marle said between laughter.

Once everyone had calmed down, Crono asked him a question. "So, where did you come up with that anyways?"

Magus frowned and looked down, turning away as he remembered where he got that line from.

_"Sister, those fools Masa and Mune asked me if I really knew everything like I claimed, and I told them I did," a six-year old Janus informed his older sister Schala.._

_"That's interesting, Janus. What did they reply?"_

_"They asked me whether the kilwala or the egg came first, but the thing is that even I am stumped on this question!" he sincerely told her, "But don't tell anyone else or they'll think that __**I **__am a fool!"_

_Schala giggled a bit as Janus told her this, causing him to become confused about what could have possibly been funny about his last couple of sentences. "Alright, do you want to know what to tell them?"_

_Janus nodded as she responded, "You tell them that the egg came first because you had it for breakfast, and you had the kilwala for dinner."_

_"But Schala, I didn't even have an egg for breakfast," he informed her, which made her laugh even more, "And besides, it's only lunchtime, not dinnertime."_

_Schala smiled once again as she replied, "But Masa and Mune don't know what you ate for breakfast, and you could just tell them you__** will eat **__a kilwala for dinner."_

_Hearing her answer, Janus grinned to the point that all his teeth were showing. "Thanks a lot, sister!"_

_As he ran away, presumably to find Masa and Mune so that he could answer their question, Schala called out to him "And don't worry, I will keep this a secret, I promise!"_

Sensing that something was wrong with Magus, Crono called out to him, "Hey Magus are you okay? Did I say something to upset you?"

Magus turned around with the signature blank expression returned to his face. "No, it's nothing."

**ooo**

Crono, Marle and Magus were preparing for the next stop by training with Spekkio for a short while. Crono and Marle still saw Spekkio as a dark blue ogan, but Magus saw him as an omnicrone. Clearly Magus was the powerhouse of the group, and Crono felt glad he was on their side, even if they had gotten into a fight that almost took his life earlier.

Lucca, meanwhile, was thinking exclusively about Fritz at the moment; though she was possessed, she could still see and hear the events that were going on during the fight against Queen. A certain line Queen said was still getting to her.

_"Now if you want to save your girlfriend here, you'll need to kill me."_

She wondered exactly what Queen had meant by that. Was it purely an immature taunt, or did Queen read Fritz's mind like an open book and see that he wanted her as more than a friend?

"Damn it Lucca, get a hold of yourself!" she thought to herself, third-person terms and all, "Your friends' son has been kidnapped, and here you are thinking like a schoolgirl."

Lucca turned to the right so that she was no longer facing the Silverd. She looked at Fritz; he had his eyes focused on the table, merely staring down at it in silence. Gaspar had fallen asleep on the chair he was sitting on. She then realized that Crono, Marle and Magus weren't the only ones with personal problems. It was clear he hadn't gotten over the fact he was pretty much forced to take another person's life not even an hour ago. As she approached him, she asked him a low voice "Fritz, are you alright?"

That question caused him to look up as Lucca sat down on the chair opposite of him so they were staring each other in the face. "Y-Yeah, I'm fine, Lucca."

With that, he looked back down again. Lucca sighed. "Fritz, are you sure? Is this about how you were forced to kill-"

Out of nowhere, Fritz suddenly slammed his right fist against the table, not raising his head. "I wasn't forced, damn it!" he shouted in anger, tears slowly beginning to flow out of his eyes and down his cheeks, "There must have been another way. I just... I just..."

Startled by her usually timid friend's display of both anger and anguish, she merely sat still in silence whilst staring down at the table like him. Both of them sat across from each other for what felt like hours, but in reality it couldn't have been more than a few minutes before the door leading to Spekkio's room burst open.

Lucca and Fritz looked up to see Magus passing through the door, Crono and Marle following his lead. Magus approached them, and once he was within a few centimeters of them, he asked them point-blank "We're going after him now, will either of you be joining us?"

Lucca hesitated for a moment before answering. "To be honest, I was thinking of going back to my home and creating some more vigil helmets, that way we can have better defense against enemies who have psychic powers in the future, or past I suppose."

Magus nodded. "I see. Be sure to have them prepared by the next time we meet," he replied before turning around to meet Crono and Marle inside the Silverd.

Immediately after Magus turned his back on them, he surprisingly turned back around to look at Fritz, who had his head down once again.

"By the way kid," he began, causing Fritz to look him in the eye, "I understand you just had your first experience taking another person's life. This may eat you inside for a while, but you'll need to get over it, after all this won't be the last time you kill another person. If it makes you feel any better, imagine all the innocent lives you'll be saving when you rid the world of that one evil person. Dwell on it and you'll be useless to us."

Fritz paid close attention to Magus' words, but hearing him give such a speech didn't have the same effect on him as Lucca. Lucca's mouth hung open a little, surprised to hear _Magus _of all people trying to cheer Fritz up. Of course, Magus could just claim that he was trying to help Fritz get over it so he would have an extra teammate to help, but Lucca sensed there was more to it. During their last journey, Magus couldn't have been more cold; he was always much more concerned about getting revenge on Lavos than saving his own sister, but the fact it now seemed to be his primary goal was a testament to how his heart had grown since then. Not that Lucca would dare point that out to him.

"Y-You're wrong! There's always an alternative to taking someone's-" Fritz started to nervously argue before Magus shouted at him in mid-sentence.

"STOP BEING SO NAIVE!"

Both Fritz and Lucca froze in place for an instant as Magus stared directly at a frightened Fritz, but as soon as Magus turned around once again to leave, they both sighed and looked at each other.

"So, Magus of all people was there to comfort you. I guess he's lightened up since the last time we teamed up," Lucca said before realizing Fritz wasn't particularly familiar with the dark mage, "Trust me, that's kind of a big deal for him, even if you don't agree with what he told you."

"Yeah, I suppose so," Fritz mumbled.

Lucca frowned a bit, noting that Fritz hadn't cheered up much. "Look Fritz, it's all my fault you got put into that situation. I should have never dragged you into this. We'll understand if you want to just go back home now."

Fritz shook his head. "No Lucca, it's not your fault at all! I should have never signed up to be a knight; I should have just continued working at my dad's shop. I wasn't prepared to take another person's life. I'm sorry," he apologized, turning his head away from her in shame as he spoke.

They both sat there in an awkward silence as they heard the Silverd take off. Lucca realized that working on more vigil hats would probably be the best idea at the moment.

"Since I'll be busy making some new equipment, I just wanted to know, well, do you by any chance want to help?" Lucca hesitantly asked her friend.

Fritz nodded in response. "Y-Yeah, anything to help the team."

Lucca smiled slightly as soon as she heard his answer. "Thank you Fritz."

**ooo**

_FWOOOOOOOSH!_

Crono, Marle and Magus had shot through time once again, and before they knew it they were hovering only a few meters over the top of a large mountain in 603 AD. This spot was all too familiar; the Magic Cave was located here.

"Heh, this is a pretty ironic situation, wouldn't you say?" Crono said to the fellow time travellers whilst he was piloting the Silverd.

"What do you mean by that?" Marle inquired.

"Last time we were here, Glenn helped us get through the cave so we could fight Magus. However, now you're our ally Magus, and Glenn is the enemy we need your help to fight," Crono explained.

"Yes, it's funny how that works, but that aside, we need to find him if we ever want to see certain relatives of ours again," Magus replied in an emotionless tone.

"Right," Crono agreed, "Now to find Glenn, we need to think of a familiar place he might be. I suggest we try the Cursed Woods first. According to the radar, it should be west of here. Alright, let's go!"

With that, Crono turned the Silverd to its left and started flying forward, headed for the Cursed Woods. As he flew over Fiona's Villa, Marle caught sight of Robo planting seeds in an empty patch of soil. She remembered how they left Robo to help Fiona for four hundred years and sighed.

"Crono, do you think Robo is fine in the new future?'

Crono's neutral expression suddenly changed as he began to frown a little bit, but he still remained foucsed on flying the Silverd. "Honestly, I don't know, but it might be for the better if we never found out the answer; I doubt we'd like it."

Magus, on the other hand, had anything but the futuristic robot on his mind. "If we're going to the Cursed Woods," he said aloud to nobody in particular, "I have a feeling we're going to run into Sir Froggy."

_**ooo**_

_**590 AD**_

_"Cyrus!" Glenn shouted as his woke up with a start._

_He sat up in his spot, taking in his surroundings. Clearly, he was in a forest. It looked familiar, but he couldn't quite place his finger on it; he was too busy trying to remember what happened earlier._

_"So you're awake, gribbit," Glenn heard from behind him, "That was a nasty fall you suffered, gribbit."_

_"A fall?" Glenn thought._

_Suddenly, all the memories from the day before came rushing back. Glenn looked at his arms. They were a pale green color._

_"How about it, Magus? Can't you give him a more fitting form?"_

_Those words spoken by the fat green monster Ozzie rang through Glenn's head as he realized that he had truly become a frog. However, that wasn't the worst part about the situation, nor was the Masamune being broken in half. His best friend since his childhood had been killed by a thunder and fire level two combo courtesy of the fiendlord Magus right in front of him._

_Glenn didn't even realize that he was crying by the time he heard the voice call out to him again. "Are you alright, gribbit?"_

_Glenn turned around to meet a small green t'pole. "I take it thou art thy one whom recovered mine body after yesterday's events."_

_"Yesterday?" the t'pole said in confusion, "You were out for three days, gribbit!"_

_Glenn looked down with his eyes closed. "By any chance hath thou found a knight next to mine body?"_

_"I think, gribbit. There was a suit of armor with a skeleton inside nearby, and there was a broken sword hilt next to it, gribbit," the t'pole informed him._

_"May I see it then?" Glenn asked as he looked up with his new large and yellow eyes. It took a lot to make Glenn focus on something besides the fact he had just transformed into a frog, but the events that occurred three days prior on the Denadoro Mountains were enough to do that._

_"Sure, come with me, gribbit," the small frog told him, "This will work out well since the Frog King has been waiting for you."_

_"The Frog King?" Glenn thought, "So these must be thine Cursed Woods."_

_**ooo**_

_The green t'pole had led Glenn into a small area with bushes and trees surrounding it. There was now a private environment for him to confront the Frog King. Lying in front of the humongous frog was a suit of armor containing a skeleton with a sword hilt next to it. The Frog King held onto the Hero's Medal._

_"So, it appears that I'm not the only one Magus has given this form to," the Frog King began, "I can tell that you were once a human. In fact, I can tell that you were one of the knights that slaughtered my troops."_

_Glenn's eyes shot up in surprise. "Thou knoweth my identity, how did thee discover it?"_

_"Look at yourself, gribbit. You have the same clothing as before you transformed."_

_It was true, although the clothing was quite a bit looser now thanks to his transformation, Glenn was still outfitted in a golden breastplate, a dark green cape, teal gloves with boots of the same color and a pair of white pants._

_"Isn't it obvious, gribbit? You were transformed into a frog by that fiend, so you may want to go after him and get your original body back," the Frog King told him, "I realized that you were quite strong, so here's the deal, gribbit; the only way to become human again is to kill Magus by your own hand, so only one of us can get our body back."  
_

_"Get to thy point," Glenn impatiently replied, "Just allow me to lay mine friend to rest and handeth over thy medal."_

_"You have actually brought me to my next point," the Frog King informed him, "You and your friend here were strong enough to take out all my troops easily, gribbit. I think that if anyone could defeat Magus, it would be you. However, I want you to bring Magus to me in near-death condition so I can finish him off. Do this for me, and I'll let you have your way, gribbit."_

_Glenn glared at him angrily. "I don't care about that right now! Handeth over thy medal, it was Cyrus'!"_

_The Frog King chuckled. "Don't you understand? This medal was mine first, gribbit."_

_"What art thou talking about!?" Glenn exclaimed, "Thy medal was Prince Guardia's before you stole it!"_

_"Don't you get it?" the Frog King shot back, "I AM Prince Guardia!"_

_"This is not amusing! Thy King and thy Queen lost Prince Guardia to Magus!" Glenn shouted._

_"No, they pushed me away just because I was a frog!" he shouted back at Glenn._

_"Enough with your lies, beast! Queen Leene would never do anything like that!"  
_

_"Fine, don't believe me. It doesn't change the fact that I have your friend's body right here. If you want it, you will help me first. After all, you will listen to me since you're a knight and I'm the prince, gribbit."_

_Glenn sighed. "Very well. Show me where to leave thine woods, and I shall do this for thee. However, I demand to have mine friend back once this is over."_

_The Frog King grinned the moment Glenn accepted his offer and held the Hero's Badge out to him. "I knew you'd go through with this, my loyal knight."_

**ooo**

**603 AD**

"Here we are, the Cursed Woods," Crono said aloud to nobody in particular as they approached the entrance.

Once they walked into the forest's entrance, Crono and Marle were appalled by the sight; even Magus was looking to the side in disgust.

Scattered all across the Cursed Woods were the carcasses of monsters with blood flowing all over the grass. In the middle was a giant frog with a crown lying beside his head. He too was bleeding heavily, and at first the group thought he was dead, but after hearing a cough come from him, Crono rushed to his side along with Marle.

"What's going on here!? Who did this!?" Crono shouted as he grabbed onto the frog that was bleeding to death.

Marle attempted to heal him with her curative magic, but it was no use; he was stabbed through the heart and he was lying in a pool of his own blood.

"You just missed... that green-haired bastard... I hadn't seen him... in years but now..." the Frog King let out between coughs and croaks, "He killed all my people once again and now he, he... he..."

With that, the Frog King let out one last "gribbit" and succumbed to his wounds, closing his eyes permanently as Crono and Marle watched in horror.

"Hey, come on now, don't die on us!" Crono yelled as he grabbed onto the gigantic frog's shoulders and started shaking him, but it was no use.

After a minute or two passed, Crono and Marle gave up on trying to heal him. They stood there in front of countless slain animals, the blood staining their shoes a dark red color. Whatever Glenn had done was excessive; the monsters weren't just killed and then done with, there were many piled up on top of each other, most of them with all of their limbs cut off. There were even some who were hanging from trees by their own entrails.

"We just missed him. Come now, the Denadoro Mountains would be the next best place to look," Magus suggested.

Crono nodded. "Yeah, you're right. That's where we found the Masamune after all."

"And where I killed Cyrus right before Glenn's eyes, not to mention turning him into a frog,"Magus thought to himself.

Magus stood there in silence while Crono and Marle walked past him, staring at the Frog King's dead body. "When I said I had a feeling we'd run into Sir Froggy, I wasn't thinking about _him_," he told them as they walked about a meter past him.

After he spoke, Crono and Marle stopped in their tracks, but they didn't look back at him since they didn't want to see the hideous sight once again. "What do you mean by that?" Marle asked out of curiousity.

"It's nothing," Magus convinced them, "Let's go, there's no time to waste."

However, as the two of them passed by him once again, Magus simply stood there, his eyes focusing on the Frog King to the point that he was ignoring the large area of blood and dead creatures. After a few seconds of staring at one of his past victims, Magus heard Crono shouting "Magus, hurry up!"

After taking one more second to look at the creature that was once Prince Guardia, Magus turned around and started to walk back in order to catch back up with the group.

"This feeling, it's the same one I get when I think about Schala," the mage pondered, "Is it... regret?"

**ooo**

"It looks like you survived our last encounter," Glenn said aloud as he heard footsteps approaching.

Crono, Marle and Magus stopped in their tracks once they heard Glenn speak. There they stood at the peak of the Denadoro Mountains, right in front of the cave where they found the Masamune so that their amphibian frog could use it. Now, it seemed that obtaining the Masamune for him would backfire.

Like the Cursed Woods, the Denadoro Mountains area was littered with dead monsters, and the grass was covered with their blood as well as their intestines. It was hard to believe anybody could cover such a huge area with the blood of the goblins, free lancers, ogans and other creatures living around the Denadora Mountains, but somehow Glenn had managed to do just that.

Magus thought of how nostalgic the place was; since it took a few hours to travel to the peak of the Denadoro Mountains, it was now night, and it seemed to be just as dark as the night Cyrus was killed. Glenn was right there, in the same exact spot he stood right before being turned into a frog.

Crono stood there in a state of extreme rage; all of this was Glenn's fault. Not only did he kidnap his son and kill several innocent people in Guardia castle, he was now also responsible for torturing and killing countless creatures, at least some of them doing nothing wrong besides being at the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that he once trusted Glenn entirely and considered him a great friend only served to add insult to injury. Crono frowned as his eyebrows were furrowed and his hands turned to fists which he clenched hard enough for even his short fingernails to stab into, causing blood to come from his hands.

With the same expression on her face as Crono, Marle took out her crossbow and aimed it at Glenn. "Glenn you bastard, what have you done with him!? Where is Ashley!?"

Turning around, Glenn gave her an answer that made her heart skip a beat along with Crono's, complete with an evil grin on his face.

"Your son? Hmph, it's already too late to save him."

**ooo**

**Author's note: Yes, I am a huge douchebag for leaving you on such a cliffhanger. Stay tuned, I promise that the next chapter will be coming sooner this time.**


End file.
